mnelson@NSF.GOV (Michael Nelson) (02/07/91)
As almost all of you know, the President's budget request released on
Monday included $149 million in new funding for a multi-agency High-
Performance Computing Program very similar to that in Senator Gore's
supercomputing bill (S. 272). The budget cross-cut for the program:
Base HPCC FY 1992 HPCC Component
Agency FY1991 FY1992 HPCS ASTA NREN BRHR
DARPA 183.0 232.2 103.3 38.5 32.9 57.5
DOE 65.0 93.0 15.0 58.0 12.0 8.0
NASA 54.0 72.4 14.2 49.8 7.4 1.0
NSF 169.0 213.0 24.0 103.0 32.7 53.3
DOC/NIST 2.1 2.9 0.3 0.6 2.0 0.0
DOC/NOAA 1.4 2.5 0.0 1.8 0.7 0.0
EPA 1.4 5.2 0.0 4.5 0.0 0.7
NIH/NLM 13.5 17.1 0.0 8.9 4.2 4.0
TOTAL 489.4 638.3 156.8 265.1 91.9 124.5
25% 41% 14% 20%
HPCS -- High Performance Computing Systems
ASTA -- Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms
NREN -- National Research and Education Network
BRHR -- Basic Research and Human Resources
There's an excellent Federal Coordinating Council for Science,
Engineering, and Technology booklet which summarizes the Administration's
new High-Performance Computing and Communications Program. Copies are
scarce, but you might be able to get copies through NSF or OSTP.
Here on the Hill, it is safe to say that a number of people were very
glad to see the new $$$ for HPC (particularly Senator Gore).
However, it is part of a package which will be very hard for the Congress
to swallow (e.g. Medicare cuts). Now for the hard part.
In other developments on the Hill, Senators Johnston, Wallop, Ford,
Domenici, Bingaman, and Craig yesterday introduced S. 343, the Department
of Energy High-Performance Computing Act. (Johnston is chairman and
Wallop is ranking Republican of the Senate Energy Committee and all the
other cosponsors are members of the committee.) The bill is quite
similar to the second title of the version of S. 1067 that passed the
Senate last year. Like last year's bill, it would set up a DOE HPC
program and "collaborative consortia" with the DOE labs and industry
to any type of HPC R&D they wish. This year's version also put DOE
in charge of networking all Federal research agencies (!?!?).
This year's bill authorizes the program without providing dollar
amounts.
Since S. 272 only authorizes NASA and NSF, S. 343 complements it
by providing authorizations for DOE. Unfortunately, the too bills
are not completely complementary (indeed they are downright
contradictory on some key points) so there will have to be some
changes made before they pass the Senate. Luckily, the House
Science Committee has jurisdiction over all three agencies so they
won't have this problem when they consider H.R. 656 (the companion
to S. 272).
Stay tuned.
P.S. The Commerce Committee will probably hold a hearing on S. 272
in early March. No date has been set yet.
Michael Nelson