The high performance computing and communications (HPCC) program: technologies for the national information infrastructure

This paper describes the emerging concept of High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) and discusses its technological, scientific and economic dimensions. It then briefly reviews development trends in the United States and Japan with a view to map the state of the art in Europe. Emphasis is placed on public, national and regional promotion programmes to develop and/or implement HPCC systems for scientific applications.

This report presents the results of a study performed by Gartner Group, Inc. for the US Department of Energy (DOE), through a contract with the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The purpose of the study is to estimate the economic impact of the Federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program which was proposed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Executive Office of the President, on September 8, 1989. That Program is an implementation of the Research and Development Strategy for High Performance Computing, which was transmitted to Congress by OSTP on November 20, 1988. The objective of this Gartner Group study to provide an assessment of the likely economic impact and benefits of the Federal HPCC Program and the risks of non-support of this program. The goals of the HPCC Program are to: support computational advances through R D effort; Reduce uncertainties to industry through increased cooperation and continued use of government as a market for High Performance Computing (HPC) prototypes; Support underlying research, network, and computational infrastructures; and support the U.S. human resource base.

As announced in the hardware Chap. 5, there is a relatively new paradigm of computation in which a single very large application problem is partitioned into subproblems which can be computed concurrently by being distributed over a network of computers, called a cluster, usually a large-scale local area network (LAN) in which nodes of the network can be connected directly through large switches to build a message-passing system. The given application problem is computationally intensive and would take too long to solve on an existing single computer, however fast it may run. For certain problem structures it is possible to partition the problem into components which can be run concurrently to achieve a speed-up that makes the solution feasible. An example is the solution of a linear system Ax = b where A is a nxn matrix and b is an n-dimensional vector. The Jacobi iterative method can be programmed to work on K groups of m components of x concurrently where n = Km. The K groups are computed on K nodes of the cluster. The individual K computers installed as the nodes in the network, usually pc’s, operate independently on their assigned subproblems for the most part, but at various points in their computations they must communicate with each other by a message-passing protocol which permits the cooperative exchange of intermediate results needed in the various subproblems. This paradigm is designated as high performance computing and communication (HPCC).KeywordsCloud ComputingFile SystemMessage Passing InterfaceHigh Performance ComputingChief Information OfficerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The 21st Century will be the Information Age. Implementation and support of the strategic plan for a national/global information infrastructure will occur through the utilization of high-performance computing and communications (HPCC). HPCC technology provides a potentially huge payoff in health care. From teleconsultations to the availability of health-related databases, the effect of using HPCC will enhance patient care, improve drug design and broaden access to medical information. Geographic distance, time to accomplish tasks, separation of people from resources, and outdated organizational structures are impediments that inhibit the ultimate achievement of all these goals. Information technology has a pervasive and unprecedented ability to remove these barriers to progress. As part of the strategic planning process, three broad classes of user-driven applications have been identified: (1) high-performance applications; (2) high-confidence applications-improving the integration, privacy, security and reliability of information flows within and across enterprises; and (3) high-capability applications for the individual-empowering individuals with universal, easy-to-use access information, and providing customization and support of their information space.

The design, analysis and development of parallel and distributed applications in High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) Systems are still very challenging tasks. Therefore, there is a great need for an integrated multilevel analysis methodology to assist in designing and analyzing the performance of both existing and proposed new HPCC systems. Currently, there are no comprehensive analysis methods that address such hierarchical modeling approach for analyzing the end-to-end performance of an application running on an HPCC system. The overall system is partitioned into application level, protocol level and network level. Functions at each level are modeled using queueing networks. The approach enables the designer to study performance for different types of networks and protocols and different design strategies. In this paper we use video-on-demand as an application example to show how our approach can be used to analyze the performance of such an application.

The Radiology Consultation WorkStation (RCWS) is a multimedia, medical imaging workstation beingdeveloped for use in an electronic radiology environment, utilizing a prototype Asynchronous Transfer Mode(ATM) telemedicine network, in support of radiotherapy treatment planning. A radiation oncologist in theRadiation Oncology Department, and a radiologist in the Diagnostic Radiology Department, will be able toconsult, utilizing high-quality audio/video channels and high-resolution medical image displays, prior to the design of a treatment plan. Organ and lesion contouring is performed via a shared-cursor feature, in a consultation mode, allowing medical specialists to fully interact during the identification and delineation of lesions and other features.Keywords: Telemedicine, Multimedia System, ATM Network, Medical Consultation, Medical Imaging 1. INTRODUCTION The development of the National Research and Education Network (NREN) was one of the five majorcomponents mandated under the Federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC)Program, by the High Performance Computing Act of 199 1 . The

<div class="htmlview paragraph">The projected radiation levels within the International Space Station (ISS) have been criticized by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel in their report to the NASA Administrator. Methods for optimal reconfiguration and augmentation of the ISS shielding are now being developed. The initial steps are to develop reconfigurable and realistic radiation shield models of the ISS modules, develop computational procedures for the highly anisotropic radiation environment, and implement parametric and organizational optimization procedures. The targets of the redesign process are the crew quarters where the astronauts sleep and determining the effects of ISS shadow shielding of an astronaut in a spacesuit. The ISS model as developed will be reconfigurable to follow the ISS. Swapping internal equipment rack assemblies via location mapping tables will be one option for shield optimization. Lightweight shield augmentation materials will be optimally fit to crew quarter areas using parametric optimization procedures to minimize the augmentation shield mass. The optimization process is being integrated into the Intelligence Synthesis Environment’s (ISE’s) immersive simulation facility at the Langley Research Center and will rely on High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) for rapid evaluation of shield parameter gradients.</div>

The current status and future development plans for the Automated Interactive Microscope (AIM), to better define the mechanisms of the function of living cells, is described. The development of AIM is fueled by biologists need to spatially and temporally correlate biochemical, molecular and genetic patterns to study cell functions such as division, locomotion and endocytosis. AIM will allow the investigator to use the cell as a “living microcuvette”.AIM redefines the meaning of the term “microscope” to include the functional capability of the microscope system provided by computerization, in addition to the more classical definition which emphasizes the opto-mechanical hardware. AIM is an next generation electronic light microscope imaging system which has grown out of our work in the development of the multimode light microscope. New functionality includes new experiment control facilities as well as related multidimensional image processing, image analysis and interactive data visualization. AIM is built around microscope hardware with high precision motion controls and a powerful host workstation computer linked, via a very high speed data gateway, with the high performance computing and communication (HPCC) facilities of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

Research into risky decision making (RDM) has become a multidisciplinary effort. Conversations cut across fields such as psychology, economics, insurance, and marketing. This broad interest highlights the necessity for collaborative investigation of RDM to understand and manipulate the situations within which it manifests. A holistic understanding of RDM has been impeded by the independent development of diverse RDM research methodologies across different fields. There is no software specific to RDM that combines paradigms and analytical tools based on recent developments in high-performance computing technologies. This paper presents a toolkit called RDMTk, developed specifically for the study of risky decision making. RDMTk provides a free environment that can be used to manage globally-based experiments while fostering collaborative research. The incorporation of machine learning and high-performance computing (HPC) technologies in the toolkit further open additional possibilities such as scalable algorithms and big data problems arising from global scale experiments.

Unstructured mesh generation from the Virtual Family models for whole body biomedical simulations

Historically, for semiconductors subject to standard operating temperatures--which tend not to exceed 125°C--the Tg (glass transition temperatures) of the organic packaging materials protecting the chips is usually around 175°C. Given that, when it comes to electronics operating at high temperatures—typically an environment where the ambient temperature exceeds 200°C—the use of organic materials is generally prohibited due to rapid degradation. At those elevated temperatures, the packaging materials selected are generally composed of metals and ceramics but these materials come with their own shortfalls as well as higher material and manufacturing costs. Therefore, it would be desirable if there were ‘ruggedized’ versions of the organic compounds so commonly used in semiconductor packaging but available for more extreme temperatures, both to reduce cost and package footprint. Meanwhile, the demands from recent developments in high performance computing (HPC) and high-speed data networks means a greater need for increased power and thermal dissipation coupled with very large package body sizes to accommodate the high I/O count. The latest in server microprocessor (MPU) products can easily generate up to 300W during operation, and the heat generated must be quickly transported away from chip to prevent the threat of thermal shutdown. The thermal dissipation issue is controlled by the use of heat spreaders and heat sinks, both of which are intended to make contact with the back-side of a flipped MPU via a thermal interface material (TIM), as part of a large die, large body-size flip-chip ball grid array (FCBGA) package. The thermal interface materials discussed here are examples of organic engineered materials that are capable of withstanding higher operating temperatures than typically seen by semiconductors encased in organic-based packaging. This paper will look at the key material and mechanical attributes for a good thermal interface material, examines the pros-and-cons of various thermal interface material formulations, and discusses the factors for reliable thermal dissipation performance.

Developments in High Performance Computing at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center

A Scalable Infrastructure for Online Performance Analysis on CFD Application

Chapter 4 - Frameworks for Big Data Integration, Warehousing, and Analytics

The theoretical concept of technological performance has emerged only recently with the publication of Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance in 2001. McKenzie develops a general theory of performance based around the development of three performance paradigms: cultural performance, organizational performance (or performance management), and technological performance. In his examination of the techno-performance paradigm, he focuses primarily on late twentieth and early twenty-first century 'high performance' technologies such as computers, guided missiles and space shuttles. While he acknowledges that the concept of performance does not apply only to technologies in this period, his analysis implicitly suggests that high performance technologies are a unique invention of the modern age. This essay confronts McKenzie's restriction of techno-performance to the post-WWII period by demonstrating how technologies performed and were seen to perform in the late nineteenth century through a techno-performance reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The late Victorian period saw startling innovations in information and communication technology (such as the overseas telegraph, the typewriter, and the gramophone), which were marketed as high performance technologies, though not in those words. To contextualise my reading of Dracula , I examine contemporary Victorian advertisements for communication technologies to demonstrate how such technologies were viewed as high performance products by Victorian advertisers and consumers. Technology in Dracula has usually been read as a metaphor. I employ McKenzie's concept of techno-performance to examine the performative functions of technology in Dracula that have not yet been explored by Victorianist scholarship. McKenzie notes two challenges posed by techno-performance: first, the challenge posed by a developer to his/her technological product, to perform or be classified as obsolete; and, second, the challenge posed by technology to its user to perform or be regarded as outmoded. I argue that Stoker's Dracula takes up both of these challenges. Emergent technologies sometimes perform in unexpected and potentially disruptive ways, much like the space shuttle Challenger cited by McKenzie; at the same time, such technologies oblige their users to perform in unexpected and disruptive ways. This essay examines emergent technologies in Dracula to highlight the relationship between individual and technological performance in the late nineteenth century.