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SUPERCOMPUTING AND AMERICAN 

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JANUARY 28, 2015 

Serial No. 114–03 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR. 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas , Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

January 28, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairwoman, Subcommittee 

on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 

Representatives .................................................................................................... 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 6 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7 

Witnesses: 

Mr. Norman Augustine, Board Member, Bipartisan Policy Center 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 12 

Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman, DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory 

Committee 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 17 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 19 

Mr. David Turek, Vice President, Technical Computing, IBM 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 50 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 52 

Dr. James Crowley, Executive Director, Society for Industrial and Applied 

Mathematics 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 59 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 61 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 66 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Mr. Norman Augustine, Board Member, Bipartisan Policy Center .................... 76 

Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman, DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory 

Committee ............................................................................................................. 77 

Mr. David Turek, Vice President, Technical Computing, IBM ............................ 82 

Dr. James Crowley, Executive Director, Society for Industrial and Applied 

Mathematics ......................................................................................................... 86 

(1) 

SUPERCOMPUTING AND AMERICAN 

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP 

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:08 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Randy Weber 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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Chairman WEBER. Well, good morning and welcome to today’s 

Energy Subcommittee hearing titled ‘‘Supercomputing and American Technology Leadership.’’ 

The Committee will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Subcommittee at any time. 

Without objection, the Chair authorizes the participation of Mr. 

Lipinski, Mr. Swalwell, Mr. Grayson, Ms. Esty, Mr. Veasey, and 

Ms. Clark for today’s hearing. And I understand Ranking Member 

Johnson will serve as the Ranking Minority Member today and 

give an opening statement a little later. 

In front of you are packets containing the written testimonies, biographies, and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today’s witnesses. 

And I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. 

At the outset let me say that this is my first Committee hearing 

as a Chairman of this Subcommittee and it is truly an honor to be 

selected to serve in this capacity. And I want to say a personal 

thanks to Chairman Lamar Smith for his help and his guidance. 

He has been just a stalwart friend of mine. I really appreciate that. 

This Committee will tackle a number of important issues related 

to America’s competitiveness and energy future, and I am excited 

to be part of these important discussions. 

Today, we are going to hear from a distinguished panel of witnesses about the importance of high-performance computing to 

American technological competitiveness, specifically focusing on the 

Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research 

program, also known as the ASCR program within the Office of 

Science. 

High-performance computing provides a platform for breakthroughs in all scientific research and accelerates applications of 

scientific breakthroughs across our economy. Progress in computing 

has paved the way for breakthroughs in medical imaging, genetics 

research, manufacturing, engineering, and weapons development. 

Faster computing speeds have revolutionized the energy sector, improving the efficiency of energy production and aiding in distribution technologies. Advances in modeling and algorithm development offer opportunities for scientific discovery in fields where experiments are too difficult, too costly, or too dangerous to conduct. 

They are reducing costs and opening the door to more innovative 

discoveries. 

The work underway in the ASCR program drives breakthroughs 

in high-performance computing. The Department of Energy’s national labs host world-class computational science facilities, and the 

Department funds the applied mathematical and computational 

science research that will drive the next stage of advancement in 

this field. 

As we face the reality of ongoing budget constraints in Washington, it is our job in Congress to ensure that taxpayer dollars are 

spent wisely on innovative research that is in the best national interest and provides the best chance for broad impact and long-term 

success. The basic research conducted within the ASCR program 

clearly meets this requirement. High-performance computing can 

lead to scientific discoveries, economic growth, and will help maintain America’s leadership in science and technology. 
6 

I want to thank the witnesses in advance for participating in today’s hearing and look forward to further discussion. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN RANDY WEBER

Good morning and welcome to today’s Energy Subcommittee hearing titled 

‘‘Supercomputing and American Technology Leadership.’’ 

Today, we will hear from a distinguished panel of witnesses about the importance 

of high performance computing to American technological competitiveness, specifically focusing on the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program, also known as the ‘‘ASCR’’ program within the Office of Science. 

High performance computing provides a platform for breakthroughs in all scientific research, and accelerates applications of scientific breakthroughs across our 

economy. Progress in computing has paved the way for breakthroughs in medical 

imaging, genetics research, manufacturing, engineering, and weapons development. 

Faster computing speeds have revolutionized the energy sector, improving the efficiency of energy production and aiding in distribution technologies. Advances in 

modeling and algorithm development offer opportunities for scientific discovery in 

fields where experiments are too difficult, costly, or dangerous to conduct, reducing 

costs and opening the door to more innovative discoveries. 

The work underway in the ASCR program drives breakthroughs in high performance computing. The Department of Energy’s national labs host world-class computational science facilities, and the department funds the applied mathematical 

and computational science research that will drive the next stage of advancement 

in this field. 

As we face the reality of ongoing budget constraints in Washington, it is our job 

in Congress to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, on innovative research 

that is in the national interest, and provides the best chance for broad impact and 

long-term success. The basic research conducted within the ASCR program clearly 

meets this requirement. High performance computing can lead to scientific discoveries, economic growth, and will maintain America’s leadership in science and technology. I thank the witnesses for participating in today’s hearing and look forward 

to further discussion. 

Chairman WEBER. I now recognize Ranking Member Johnson for 

an opening statement. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I thank 

you for holding this hearing. And I want to thank our very excellent panel of witnesses for their testimony and being here today. 

America has historically been a leader in advancing new energy 

technologies, as well as the fundamental sciences of physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and computational science that 

support energy innovation. But our leadership in technology is 

challenged by the growing investments of other countries in education and research, investments that are now predicted to quickly 

outpace our own investments here at home. 

High-performance computing or supercomputing is one area that 

we have led in for decades and the United States currently holds 

more than 45 percent of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the 

world. These computers are capable of processing vast amounts of 

data and mathematical equations at amazing speeds. 

In the past, high-performance computers were needed primarily 

for specialized scientific and engineering applications. Now, as we 

enter the world of big data where thousands of devices all around 

us are generating millions of bytes of data to be analyzed, high-performance computing is needed not just by scientists and government researchers but by many civic and commercial enterprises as 

well. 
7 

Public policies play a critical role in supporting the advancement 

of high-performance computing and in enabling our society and 

economy to directly benefit from this capability. Our policies allow 

researchers and private industry to access the Department of Energy’s computing systems, which are some of the most powerful in 

the world. We set policies that support the development of the software necessary to operate and optimize the use of high-performance systems, software that is unlikely to be developed by private 

industry because the potential sales market is too small to support 

the initial research and development costs. And our policies ensure 

that our investments in new computer architectures are diverse 

and flexible enough to meet our national security needs, in addition 

to our research and private industry needs. Federal investments in 

high-performance computing open this technology up to the future 

development of proprietary products. They grow our technology 

economy and they advance our technological leadership internationally. 

Now, while every witness on this panel is extremely distinguished and I am grateful that each of you could be here today, I 

hope you won’t mind if I thank Dr. Augustine in particular for taking time to speak with us this morning as he has been a great 

friend to this Committee for well over a decade. As a former Chairman of Lockheed Martin and the Chair of the National Academy 

of Sciences Committee that produced the seminal Rising above the 

Gathering Storm report in 2005, he has a broad and deep perspective on the challenges facing our Nation in research and technological innovation. That report laid the foundation for one of our 

Committee’s landmark bipartisan achievements, the America COMPETES Act of 2007, which we reauthorized in 2010 and I hope the 

next reauthorization is a top priority for the Committee and this 

Congress. 

I look forward to hearing Mr. Augustine’s thoughts and indeed 

those of all of our witnesses on where we need to go in scientific 

research and innovation to grow our economy and to improve the 

quality of life for all Americans. Working together, our Committee 

has the opportunity to renew our commitment to scientific and 

technological leadership by our actions, and I look forward to any 

input our panelists have toward that goal. 

With that, I thank you for coming and I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

RANKING MEMBER EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON

Thank you Chairman Weber for holding this hearing, and I also 

want to thank this excellent panel of witnesses for their testimony 

and for being here today. 

America has historically been a leader in advancing new energy 

technologies, as well as the foundational sciences of physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and computational science that 

support energy innovation. But our leadership in technology is 

challenged by the growing investments of other countries in edu-
8 

cation and research; investments that are now projected to quickly 

outpace our own investments here at home. 

High performance computing, or supercomputing, is one area we 

have led in for decades, and the U.S. currently hosts more than 

45% of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. These computers are capable of processing vast amounts of data and mathematical equations at amazing speeds. In the past, high performance computers were needed primarily for specialized scientific and 

engineering applications. Now, as we enter the world of ‘big data’, 

where thousands of devices all around us are generating millions 

of bytes of data to be analyzed, high performance computing is 

needed not just by scientists and government researchers, but by 

many civic and commercial enterprises as well. 

Public policies play a critical role in supporting the advancement 

of high performance computing, and in enabling our society and 

economy to directly benefit from this capability. Our policies allow 

researchers and private industry to access the Department of Energy’s computing systems, which are some of the most powerful in 

the world. We set policies that support the development of the software necessary to operate and optimize the use of high performance systems—software that is unlikely to be developed by private 

industry because the potential sales market is too small to support 

the initial research and development costs. And our policies ensure 

that our investments in new computer architectures are diverse 

and flexible enough to meet our national security needs, in addition 

to our research and private industry needs. Federal investments in 

high performance computing open this technology up for future development of proprietary products, they grow our technology economy, and they advance our technological leadership internationally. 

Now, while every witness on this panel is extremely distinguished and I am grateful that each of you could be here today, I 

hope you won’t mind if I thank Dr. Augustine in particular for taking time to speak with us this morning, as he has been a great 

friend to the Committee for well over a decade. As the former 

Chairman of Lockheed Martin and the Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee that produced the seminal Rising 

Above the Gathering Storm report in 2005, he has a broad and 

deep perspective on the challenges facing our nation in research 

and technological innovation. That report laid the foundation for 

one of our Committee’s landmark bipartisan achievements, the 

America COMPETES Act of 2007, which we reauthorized in 2010, 

and I hope the next reauthorization is a top priority for the Committee in this new Congress. 

I look forward to hearing Mr. Augustine’s thoughts—and indeed 

those of all of our witnesses - on where we need to go in scientific 

research and innovation to grow our economy and to improve the 

quality of life of all Americans. Working together, our Committee 

has the opportunity to renew our commitment to scientific and 

technological leadership by our actions, and I look forward to any 

input our panelists have towards that goal. 

With that, I thank you all for coming, and I yield back the balance of my time. 
9 

Chairman WEBER. I thank the lady, and if there are Members 

who wish to submit additional opening statements, your statements will be added to the record at this point. 

Chairman WEBER. At this time I would like to introduce our witnesses. Our first witness, who comes with high commendations, is 

Mr. Norman Augustine, Board Member of the Bipartisan Policy 

Center. Mr. Augustine served as the Undersecretary of the Army 

and later as acting Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977. Mr. 

Augustine also served as the President and CEO of Lockheed Martin until he retired in 1997. He has been a member of advisory 

boards to the Department of Homeland Security, Energy, Defense, 

Commerce, Transportation, and Health and Human Services, as 

well as NASA, Congress, and the White House. 

Is there any other—are there boards that you weren’t a member 

of, Mr. Augustine? 

Our second witness today who is actually joining us by video is 

Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman of the Advanced Scientific Computing 

Advisory Committee at the Department Of Energy and a Professor 

at Boston University. Dr. Giles has served in a number of leadership roles in the community, including Member of the Board of Associated Universities Incorporated, Chair of the Boston University 

Faculty Council, and General Chair of the SC conference in 2002. 

Welcome, Dr. Giles. 

Dr. GILES. Thank you. 

Chairman WEBER. Our next witness today is Mr. David Turek, 

Vice President of Technical Computing at IBM. Previously Mr. 

Turek—am I saying that name correctly? Okay. Previously, Mr. 

Turek helped launch IBM’s grid computing business and ran IBM’s 

Linux cluster business. He also helped lead IBM’s initiative in support of the U.S. Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which I believe is in Mr. 

Swalwell’s district. 

Mr. SWALWELL. That is right. 

Chairman WEBER. Yes. So welcome. 

Our final witness today is Dr. James Crowley, Executive Director 

at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Crowley 

has held this position since 1995. Prior to this, he served in the Air 

Force for 22 years retiring as Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Crowley is 

a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and a fellow of the 

American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

In order to allow time for discussion, please limit your testimony 

to five minutes, we ask the witnesses, and your entire statement 

will be made part of the written record. 

I now recognize Mr. Augustine for five minutes to present his 

testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. NORMAN AUGUSTINE, 

BOARD MEMBER, BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Weber, 

Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the Subcommittee, and 

thank you, Ranking Member Johnson, for all those kind words. 

I am particularly appreciative that this Committee is going to devote some time to the topic at hand and certainly high-performance 

computing is a key element of research. 
10 

I will submit a statement for the record. 

I would like to begin by offering a few words about the basic nature of research. It is through research that new knowledge is created that permits engineers like myself to translate that research, 

knowledge into products and services that, working with entrepreneurs, can go into the marketplace and improve people’s lives. 

We often think of Apple, the great things it has done, deservedly. 

Think of the iPod, iPads, and so on. But it wasn’t Apple that made 

those things possible; it was researchers working decades ago on 

such things as quantum mechanics and material sciences, solidstate physics, and so on. 

One of the things about basic research in particular is that you 

can’t know or priority what will be the outcome of it and that sure 

makes it particularly difficult in your roles, to build support for it, 

yet there are so many examples of where basic research that was 

curiosity-driven led to greater improvements in people’s lives. 

Three things that come to my mind, one is research on seals in 

Antarctica that led to a surgical procedure that saved the lives of 

many children undergoing lung surgery. Another was study of the 

chemistry of butterfly wings of that led to an ingredient that is 

used in chemotherapy. Still another of course would be the accidental discovery of penicillin when someone was studying research 

on bacteria many, many decades ago, Sir Alexander Fleming. 

I would like to quickly touch on the importance of research and 

I will cite three areas where I think it has particularly had an impact. One is on the creation of jobs and there is evidence that if 

you want to one percentage point to the average number of jobs in 

America, you have to add about 1.7 percentage points to the GDP 

of America. There have been a number of studies, one of which was 

the basis of a Nobel Prize and it has shown that between 50 and 

85 percent of the growth of GDP in our country during the last 

half-century is directly attributable to advancements in two fields: 

science and technology. And of course those advancements are entirely dependent upon research. 

Health is an example. In the last century life expectancy in the 

United States grew from 47 to 79 years. In fact, I am 79 years old 

so this is really important to me. The life expectancy gain that 

came about was in considerable part attributable to advancements 

in biomedical research. 

A third example is things that we take for granted in our everyday life, be they television, electric cars, DVDs, GPSs, CAT scans, 

or what have you, are dependent upon the knowledge that came 

through basic research. 

Touching briefly on high-performance computing, it impacts field 

across the entire technological spectrum. My own field of aerodynamics is an example, another would be genomics, high-energy 

physics. It truly is of broad importance. 

The Department of Energy, as you know, operates 17 laboratories. They are able to do things that industry really can’t do 

under the pressures of today’s marketplace for quick returns, financial returns. The examples, things that they could do so well are 

high-risk, high-return payoff research or long-term research, large 

research projects. They are particularly well suited to that. And 

work in the past, for example, sponsored by the Department of En-
11 

ergy on hydraulic fracturing, as you know, has had an enormous 

impact today in the political world, as well as the economic world. 

How are we doing in the United States in research? The answer 

has to be not very well. Research funding as a percentage of GDP 

of the United States has dropped from 1st place to 7th place in the 

last decade or so. The fraction of research in a country that is sponsored by the government, United States is down in 29th place. As 

a fraction of GDP—R&D to GDP we are in 10th place now. In five 

years China is very likely to pass us in research in the absolute 

sense and as a fraction of GDP. 

Finally, I would note that H.R. 5120 that was introduced last 

year contributes in a major way to solving what I think are some 

of the problems we have at translating the research that goes on 

in the DOE laboratories to the commercial sector, and I would be 

happy to address that further should the Committee wish. Thank 

you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Augustine follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Augustine. 

And now, we recognize Dr. Giles. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. ROSCOE GILES, CHAIRMAN, 

DOE ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING 

ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

Dr. GILES. Thank you, Chairman Weber, and Ranking Member 

Johnson, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting 

me to testify today and thanks for your support of the outstanding 

scientific and technical activities we are here to discuss. 

The Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, 

ASCAC, which I chair, is a panel of experts that advises DOE 

under FACA rules about activities of the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, ASCR. My testimony is largely based 

on ASCAC reports. I will address the value of research supported 

directly and indirectly by ASCR and also the technological challenges and rewards represented by U.S. leadership in this field. 

The computing needs of science have grown exponentially, paralleling the exponential increases in computer power we have seen 

in recent decades sometimes pushing the computer industry for 

new capabilities and sometimes finding novel ways to exploit existing technology. The combination of computing power and the ability to transport, store, and learn from vast amounts of data is critical to U.S. leadership in a wide range of scientific and technical 

fields. 

ASCR has enabled DOE scientists to harness unprecedented 

computing power to better understand the physical world, design 

new materials and devices, and engineer new and improved methods for energy production, utilization, and distribution. Recent examples include microscopic modeling of nuclear reactor core startup 

that can improve reactor efficiency and safety; simulations of complex combustion making the chemistry and physics of fluids and 

gases to the observed behavior of engines and reactor; predictive 

modeling of materials for lithium air batteries systems potentially 

able to store 10 times as much energy as lithium ion batteries; 

wheat genome sequencing previously impossible to do is now possible in under 32 seconds using new programming methods developed by ASCR; and modeling the surface of human skin to understand its properties and how chemicals might affect it. My written 

testimony includes many additional examples. 

ASCR enables such outcomes by designing and deploying an effective system of world-class facilities for computing, data science, 

and networking in DOE labs making available expert staff to work 

with scientists to push the envelope of applications and supporting 

research in computer science in applied mathematics leading to key 

advances in software, hardware, algorithms, and applications. 

Success also depends on a knowledgeable workforce and an educational pipeline to create that workforce. ASCR supports both 

training programs for scientists and the renowned Computational 

Science Graduate Fellowship program, CSGF. ASCR nurtures all 

elements of the ecosystem for scientific computing. 

What about the future? ASCR has consistently provided leadership to DOE, the Nation, and the world by accelerating the development of new computing capabilities that can transform science. 
18 

When I last appeared before this Subcommittee in May of 2013, we 

testified about the importance of funding the development of 

exascale computing and the dangers to U.S. leadership in computational science if we fail to move expeditiously. Since that time, the 

urgency has increased, as has our knowledge of how to proceed. 

In February 2014, ASCAC reported to DOE on the top 10 

exascale research challenges. This report reflected the progress 

since our earlier 2010 exascale report. In addition to identifying the 

10 challenges, our expert panel emphasized both that the United 

States has the technical foundation to address and overcome them 

and that it is critical that we do so. 

In August 2014 the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task 

Force on Next-Generation Computing, of which I was a participant, 

made public in its draft report, which included the recommendation 

that DOE move forward with next-generation computing at the 

exascale level. The report also endorsed continued use of the co-design process and of government-industry-academic partnering 

mechanisms. ASCR, in collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration, has developed the preliminary plan for such 

an exascale computing initiative. This plan was provided to ASCAC 

for review last November. This review is actively in process with 

the resulting report due in September 2015 and an interim report 

at the end of March. 

I think it is more important than ever for the United States to 

maintain and extend its leadership in scientific computing. I hope 

that our presence here today will help to that end. Thank you very 

much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Giles follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Dr. Giles. 

And, Mr. Turek, you are now recognized for five minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. DAVID TUREK, VICE PRESIDENT, 

TECHNICAL COMPUTING, IBM 

Mr. TUREK. Good morning, Chairman Weber, Ranking Member 

Johnson, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about the Office of Science ASCR program, supercomputing, and American technology leadership. 

I have been involved in many of IBM’s activities and supercomputing over the last 25 years. During that time, I have worked 

closely on supercomputing projects with both the Office of Science 

and NNSA such as ASCI White, Blue, and Purple systems at Lawrence Livermore; the Blue Gene systems, Mira, and Sequoia at Argonne and Livermore respectively; the Roadrunner system at Los 

Alamos; and as well as key software projects at Pacific Northwest 

National Lab. I have witnessed firsthand the magnitude of innovation possible courtesy of the collaboration between private industry 

and the national labs. 

I would like to pose today three questions with respect to the 

linkage between supercomputing and technological leadership. 

First, why be concerned about supercomputing leadership? The 

Council on Competitiveness has stated that to out-compete you 

must out-compute. I believe this to be true. Supercomputers, as the 

other panelists have said, are tools for inside strategic advantage 

with broad and diverse application in areas such as oil discovery, 

fraud detection, efficient automobile and aerospace design, and 

even many areas of basic science. It is nearly axiomatic that better 

supercomputers give one a chance for more insight and greater advantage than those with lesser supercomputers. That is why you 

see the Europeans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and others making 

a concerted push through public funding of major supercomputer 

projects. They want to out-compete us. 

But there is a fundamental understanding we must also have. 

Supercomputers are nothing without the software programs and 

applications that run on them and software engineers only want to 

produce software for the best machine, not the second, third, or 

fourth best. Without the best supercomputers available in the 

United States, software developers will migrate to develop their innovations elsewhere. Once that trend starts, it is very hard to stop 

or reverse. It is much more costly to catch up than it is to stay 

ahead. 

The second question is what technology problems are in the way 

of maintaining leadership? The first problem is the need to make 

supercomputers more energy efficient. The fastest Western economy-based supercomputers in the world today consume about 10 

megawatts of energy or $10 million a year. As supercomputers get 

bigger and more powerful, without some real breakthroughs, by the 

beginning of the next decade the energy bill could easily be 100 

megawatts or $100 million to run. This means the cost of energy 

will begin to overtake the cost of the computer itself, that becoming 

a limiting factor in supercomputer usage. A slowdown in usage will 

ultimately correlate with a slowdown in innovation and impact economic competitiveness. 
51 

The second problem is how to handle huge amounts of data. It 

is clear that the explosive growth of data is challenging some of the 

fundamental design principles of supercomputers. For example, 500 

e-books is about a billion bytes of data. With today’s technology, 

that amount of data can be moved through a computer network in 

a matter of minutes or less. But suppose we multiplied that 

amount of data by a million? That would represent the amount of 

data many supercomputers are working on today and in short 

order there will be problems a thousand times beyond that. 

Old design principles don’t solve this problem. We cannot simply 

do what we did in the past at greater scale to fix this. The temptation, therefore, would be to ignore portions of data to make the 

problem more tractable, but data left unanalyzed is insight undiscovered, so we have to find ways to make future supercomputers 

more accommodating to the vast amounts of data they will be 

asked to explore. New innovations are requiring networking, memory design, storage innovation, and data management software to 

remedy this circumstance. 

The third problem is application software. Most application software running on supercomputers today are based on mathematical 

approaches more than 40 years old, which is the last time there 

was a major systematic government investment in new algorithms. 

The software is now horribly mismatched to modern supercomputers simply because 40 years ago no one could have guessed 

what today’s supercomputers would look like. Access to modern 

software and new algorithms will have a dramatic impact on the 

utility of modern supercomputers. There must be a plan to modernize application software. There is no silver bullet to solve these 

problems. Inventions required to maximize impact, all the problems 

must be addressed in concert. 

The third question is what needs to happen to maintain leadership? From my experience, collaboration with the national labs has 

been a proven means to stimulate innovation in supercomputers. 

The labs work on problems of such complexity they always stretch 

the limits of computing technology. In fact, a crude rule of thumb 

is the computing requirements of the national labs are about five 

to seven years advanced over the rest of the market. Finding the 

ASCR program will present the opportunity to address the problems I described and contribute to maintain the pace of innovation 

competitiveness demands. If this commitment is made, U.S. leadership in supercomputing should be preserved for years to come. 

Thank you very much and I would be happy to answer your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Turek follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Turek. 

And now, Dr. Crowley, you are recognized for five minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JAMES CROWLEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

SOCIETY FOR INDUSTRIAL AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS 

Dr. CROWLEY. Good morning, Chairman Weber, Ranking Member 

Johnson, and Members of the Committee. 

As noted in my introduction, I am Executive Director of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, or SIAM. SIAM comprises over 14,000 members who work in industry, government and 

national labs, and in academia. They represent over 500 universities, corporations, and research organizations from around the 

world. SIAM is dedicated to solving real-world problems through 

applied mathematics and computational science. 

Thank you very much for allowing me to testify and for highlighting the critical work of the Department of Energy’s Office of 

Science and its Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. 

SIAM greatly appreciates your Committee’s continued leadership 

on, and the recognition of, the critical roles of the Office of Science 

and ASCR in enabling a strong U.S. economy, workforce, and society through mathematical, scientific, and engineering research relevant to the DOE mission. 

The Office of Science supports basic research to address pressing 

challenges in energy, computing, physical sciences, and biology and 

this support has been critical to the applied mathematics and computational science community. 

I wish to focus on three topics: ASCR support for mathematical 

and computational science research, the potential benefits of 

exascale and the technological challenges to reach it, and finally 

workforce and training needs. First, the role of ASCR in supporting 

key mathematical and computational research. 

ASCR supports the development of new modeling simulation and 

data tools to help researchers solve scientific and energy challenges. Modern life as we know it, from search engines like Google 

to the design of modern aircraft, would not be possible without the 

unique contributions of mathematicians and computational scientists. Likewise, DOE depends on mathematical and computational techniques to make predictions, model and simulate systems 

that would be costly or impossible to experiment on, and manage 

and make sense of ever-growing data that is produced by scientific 

experiments such as DOE’s particle accelerators and light source 

facilities. 

The Nation faces critical challenges in energy efficiency, renewable energy, future energy sources, and environmental impacts of 

energy production and use. These challenges all involve complex 

systems such as the power grid or the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Mathematical and computational tools help us model and understand 

these systems, design new solutions to problems, and predict the 

impact of new technologies. ASCR programs not only support new 

mathematical tools but also develop software so that DOE, industry, and the academic community can use these tools. And I note 

that the PETSc team at Argonne just was awarded the ACM SIAM 

prize in computational science and engineering and that shows the 

power of the people working at DOE. 
60 

Second, I would like to address the possibilities and challenges 

of exascale. For all the advances that ASCR has already enabled, 

today, there are still challenges that are too complex for current 

computers to model. Exascale computing has the potential to spur 

revolutionary advances in modeling and simulation, expand our capacity to analyze complex systems in great detail, and capture 

more complexity with better predictive abilities than ever before. 

I will note that the investments in modeling, algorithm research, 

and software development are essential to realizing the full benefits of exascale computers so that we can use these machines to 

solve pressing scientific and energy challenges. It is not just the 

hardware; the computer science and the math are essential. 

Finally, I would like to discuss an important workforce development program within ASCR. Researchers trained to use high-performance computers to solve key scientific challenges are central to 

DOE’s mission. The Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship 

program is a critical program that maintains the pipeline of this 

workforce by supporting the training of new scientists and engineers with strong computational research experience and close ongoing ties to DOE and the national labs. The CSGF has a long history of success at DOE and SIAM strongly supports its continuation. 

I thank you again for the opportunity to provide this testimony 

today and I am happy to answer any questions. I have provided additional details in my written testimony. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Crowley follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you. I thank the witnesses for their 

testimony. Members are reminded that the Committee rules limit 

the questioning to five minutes and the Chair recognizes himself 

for five minutes. 

Good grief, where do we start? You all have just raised a whole 

bunch of questions. Dr. Crowley, can you provide an overview in 

plain English so our constituents can understand? You kind of 

went through it there toward the end of what ASCR program does 

but why is it important to the U.S. economy? 

Dr. CROWLEY. The tools that are provided for modeling and simulation are used across—I gave you the example of the award—the 

prize that went to the PETSc team at Argonne National Lab. 

PETSc is a team that has developed computational tools for highperformance computers. These tools are used by industry that do 

modeling and simulation for advancing materials, some of the 

things that Roscoe Giles mentioned, and without those tools, one 

can’t use the computers efficiently to do that. And so it is the research into not only developing the tools that the people can use 

the computers but also the models that run on them. 

I mean to take an example that is not necessarily a DOE model 

but just looking at one that came home to me recently because of 

the weather prediction in Philadelphia that almost kept me from 

coming here, this latest snowstorm missed Philadelphia but it was 

predicted to dump more than a foot of snow on us. Improved modeling, better tools, and higher performance computing would have 

made that ability to make those predictions much better. And that 

same thing applies for any other kind of thing that is modeled 

across science and engineering, that with better tools for modeling, 

better computational tools, we can advance our ability to produce 

better materials, to simulate anything that we need—and understand better scientific things in fusion or in any other area. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay. I think it was you that said that the 

algorithms or the math that was used 40 years ago—it was Mr. 

Turek so this question is probably for you—couldn’t predict or you 

couldn’t see what computers look like today. What did you say 

about that? 

Mr. TUREK. Yeah, what I meant by that was that at that time 

frame, the nature of what was considered to be a supercomputer 

bears no resemblance to the kinds of computers that exist today, 

so people designed the algorithms and the corresponding software 

to map to that kind of computer. Those approaches don’t translate 

well over four decades to the kinds of things we are doing today. 

Chairman WEBER. So here is my question. Do we have the capability today to look out 40 years in the future and predict how effective those algorithms will be or will there be new techniques? 

With advanced computing today are we able to look out 40 years 

in the future? 

Mr. TUREK. Nobody can look out 40 years correctly. However, 

what I would say is that we know that many of the algorithms and 

the software implementations today are obsolete for what we are 

trying to do. The way to characterize it would be the following: Today’s modern supercomputers typically use order of millions of 

microprocessors. Many of the algorithms and the software implemented only scale to maybe a handful of hundred of micro-
67 

processors not because it can be done; it is because it is a byproduct of the fact that that invention is 40 years old. A reinvestment 

in algorithmic development, the fundamental mathematics and the 

associated software, has been demonstrably proven in places like 

Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge that these approaches to common problems can be modified to accommodate this 

nature of supercomputing we have today. You would have a material effect on dramatically improving the insight that people gain 

from the application of the supercomputing tool. 

Chairman WEBER. Is part of the aim of ASCR, for example—because we hear a lot in today’s society about hacking and so we invest the money and I am a great believer that we need to be on 

the cutting edge because it helps national security, for example, 

but are we at risk with supercomputing of investing money, time, 

and resources, and then having that technology stolen from us by 

other countries 

Mr. TUREK. So there is this notion of internationalism if you will, 

but I would characterize it this way: The Chinese program is very 

parochial to China. The European program is very parochial to Europe and they are making investments that are very much wedded 

to the parochial interests of companies and institutions in those geographies. There is always the chance that through regular commerce or more nefarious means technology can escape geographic 

boundaries, but I think the deployment of technology in the economy is what really makes a difference, so the more supercomputing 

that can be made available, the more and diverse kinds of people 

who can get access to it and use it is what really spurs the economic kind of innovation we have all alluded to here today. 

Chairman WEBER. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. And I am out 

of time so the Chair will now recognize Ranking Member Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I am so delighted we have such able witnesses today and I know 

that this hearing is focused on our investments in supercomputing 

research in particular, but I would like to take advantage of your 

presence, Mr. Augustine, to ask a few broad questions to help us 

guide the future in how we are able to continue research, whether 

or not we are producing the researchers. In 2005 the National 

Academies’ Gathering Storm Panel, which you chaired, recommended increasing science agency budgets by ten percent annually. 

The 2007 COMPETES bill, which was very graciously accepted 

and supported by President Bush, had bipartisan support for a 

positive growth trajectory of R&D, and unfortunately, appropriations for the last eight years have not come close to keeping up 

with what was projected. It was changed to a more conservative 

recommendation to at least four percent annually in 2014. 

In the current budgetary and political environment, how would 

you continue to make the case for increased funding for R&D to 

politicians across the political spectrum? And what do you believe 

are the consequences if we do not even achieve this modest four 

percent annual growth target for federal investment in basic research and development? And, finally, do you believe that a robust 

reauthorization of America COMPETES should be a top priority for 

this Committee this year? 
68 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, thank you for that question. 

Chairman WEBER. Mr. Augustine, turn your mike on, please. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. I thought it was on. 

Chairman WEBER. Oh, there you go. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Sorry. To deal with the last part of your question first, I think America COMPETES is perhaps the most important thing that this Committee could take on. It drew more attention to the problems we face in this area and took further steps to 

improving the situation than anything else I am aware of that we 

have done. So I would strongly urge that. 

With regard to the status of the research and where we have 

come since the various reports that you allude to, the bad news is 

that we are declining in our investment in research as a percentage 

of GDP. Other countries are growing. Even at NIH, which is—research there is strongly favored by the American public—we have 

seen a 22 percent cut in the last decade in real dollars and it is 

continuing to decline. This of course discourages young people from 

going into research and basically it means that we are going to 

have a lower quality of life, impact on our health will be very real, 

and the economy today is so heavily dependent on technology that 

without doubt we will be hurt economically seriously. 

I would cite an example from my own field of the impact of research and particularly high-performance computing. I am an 

aerodynamicist, design airplanes, among other things. The way we 

used to design airplanes when I was early in my career was built 

giant wind tunnels. We built them when they were plugged into 

the Tennessee Valley Authority by and large because that was the 

only place we could get enough power. We ran them at night we 

didn’t shut down the lights in the southern part of the country. 

Today, we don’t use wind tunnels. We put the airplane and a 

high-performance computer if you will, use a mathematical model 

and within a nanosecond have the answers that we are researching, just one example of the enormous impact that investment in 

technology can have and also the negative impact of not investing 

in science, research, and technology. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, thank you very much. 

The National Research Council report entitled ‘‘Rising to the 

Challenge: U.S. Innovation Policy for the Global Economy,’’ states 

the assumption that the output of the U.S. innovation process will 

be captured by U.S.-based industry has been rendered obsolete by 

globalization, and that knowledge created through federally funded 

research at universities and national laboratories can be commercialized and industrialized virtually anywhere. The report goes on 

to say that a more comprehensive innovation policy is needed to 

anchor new and existing companies here in the United States. 

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences panel that you recently chaired addressed some of this issue in a report released this 

fall. What recommendations do you have for what federal policies 

are necessary to ensure that U.S. companies benefit from U.S. innovation? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, thank you for that question. And as you 

point out, research is a global commodity or global asset, and it 

raises a question why not just let others do the research and then 

apply their research? The answer, I would cite Craig Barrett, who 
69 

ran Intel some years ago. Craig says that on the last day of any 

calendar year 90 percent of the revenues that Intel receives are for 

products that didn’t exist on the first day of the calendar year, and 

so the only answer to your question that I can see is that we just 

have to be faster than others in applying the results of research. 

We have got to be fast. 

And your question what do we do about it and the answer is remove every bureaucratic obstacle, every obstacle we can think of, 

particularly in technology transfer from the labs, that causes time 

delay because time is everything. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

Thank you. 

Chairman WEBER. Thank you. 

And the Chair now recognizes the Vice Chairman of this Committee, Congressman Newhouse. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that and appreciate you gentlemen being here this morning 

and talking about this very important subject. It is certainly enlightening me as to the nature of our responsibility here. 

Not to let you dominate the program this morning, Mr. Augustine, but a question that arose in my mind after reading through 

your testimony that a lot of the body of research at our national 

laboratories is maybe not being utilized as much as it could be so 

to speak, not to put words in your mouth, but there are certain obstacles that stand in the way of getting that research to industries. 

So could you talk a little bit about maybe what you see as solutions 

to that issue that we have? Is it communication, some of the conflict-of-interest issues that you mentioned, and those kinds of 

things? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, thank you, Congressman Newhouse, for 

that question. And I do believe that the Nation doesn’t begin to 

benefit from the asset that our national labs represent. It certainly 

benefits importantly but it could be so much more, and the reason 

for that is that we need to do a better job of getting knowledge out 

of the laboratories and into industry so that we can commercialize 

and distribute the results. 

And as to impediments, there are many. One that certainly 

stands in my mind is that firms simply don’t know what is going 

on in the national laboratories. They tend to be rather isolated. 

And we could do a much better job of letting people, industry, know 

what is happening at the laboratories. 

Secondly, the best way to transfer technology that I have ever 

been able to find is by transferring people. You move the knowledge that is in their minds. And today, well-meaning conflict-of-interest laws make it very difficult to transfer people among industry, government, and academia. In my career I had the opportunity 

to put in two tours in government and today I doubt that I could 

do that under the conflict-of-interest laws that exist. 

A third one that I would cite is that we are very concerned, properly so, about favoring one firm over another. What do we do about 

it? Without taking a great deal of time, one is for the labs to do 

a better job of letting the world know what they are working on, 

the industrial world if you will. Other things that are cited in H.R. 

5120, for example, giving the labs more latitude to create industry 
70 

partnerships, give the labs more latitude to negotiate technology 

transfer agreements. These are a few of the things that could be 

done but I don’t have answers to the conflict-of-interest one because obviously we don’t want conflicts of interest. On the other 

hand, the inability to move people and to move ideas in and out 

of the labs is a huge burden on our country. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Thank you. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Quickly, a question then perhaps for Mr. Turek 

and perhaps Dr. Giles as well. It is—my limited understanding is 

that the largest supercomputers are rarely able to operate at full 

capacity due to their complexity, some components almost always 

in need of attention or repair. If that is a true statement, could you 

tell me what is being done to improve the reliability of these systems and are we devoting enough resources to this aspect of advancement? 

Mr. TUREK. I will take the first shot at it. We are doing a lot for 

that. A lot of that is actually handled by software so soft recoveries 

of problems. What you see with supercomputing are problems of 

scale. If you have a million parts of anything, the likelihood is you 

are going to see something failing pretty regularly, even if it is integrated circuits. It is a problem that has been understood for quite 

some time and principally is handled by software techniques to 

overcome it. So in the vast majority of cases you actually can get 

to full capacity if you have the software capability on the application level to utilize it. That is the bigger impediment right now. 

Again, most people who gain access to commercial software are 

gaining access to software that is archaically designed relative to 

the scale of the kinds of computers being built today and that is 

the limiting factor. 

Dr. GILES. Can I add something? 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Absolutely, Dr. Giles. 

Dr. GILES. I think that—yes, I think that also our sense of what 

the capacity of a system is reflects some of the archaic history in 

the sense that we often measure or think of a capacity is how much 

data can you sort of crunch, transform from one form to another, 

which is an artifact of the time when the critical component of a 

computer was the processor that made that transformation. Now, 

people are looking at systems with millions of processors and redundancy in processors is not a negative to have multiple processors comparing results one to another. So, as Mr. Turek said, 

there are lots of opportunities for new ways of ensuring the reliability of the final answers we get. 

And if we get discouraged about thinking about that problem, I 

would remind us all that our brains, with millions and millions 

of—and billions of neurons and interconnections have faults on the 

neuron level all the time and they don’t materially affect the ultimate outcome, and I think we are in the process of building computers that can function more like that. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman WEBER. Thank you. 

And the Chair now recognizes Congressman Hultgren from Illinois for five minutes. 
71 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank 

you, Chairman. I especially want to thank the Chairman for working out a way for Dr. Giles to be with us remotely. 

I am very fortunate to represent Fermilab and I have Argonne 

right down the road from me. Because of this, I have been able to 

see the fruits that grow out of our Nation’s commitment to basic 

curiosity-driven scientific research. The impacts of this research I 

believe are limitless. Just as we didn’t go to the moon to invent 

Velcro, we didn’t build particle colliders so that we could invent the 

magnet for our MRI machines. 

This topic, supercomputing, is close to home for me because physics is where big data began. Besides the maintenance of our nuclear stockpile, it is either astrophysics or high-energy physics that 

is driving the research necessary to build the most sophisticated 

computer networks we have today. Because of this, it was largely 

DOE that began the genome project before NIH realized it was a 

feasible endeavor. As interested as I am in technology transfer and 

local economic development, if our research enterprise is focused on 

the short-term photo op and press release-style research, which it 

appears the Administration is more prone to advance, we will lose 

out on the long-term benefits we all say we should be focused on. 

If we are going to stay at the forefront of technology or technological development, we must reaffirm our commitment to basic scientific research. 

Dr. Giles, in our previous hearing, you had a chance to review 

a draft copy of my legislation, which in the 113th House eventually 

passed, H.R. 2495, the American Supercomputing Leadership Act. 

My bill called for a lab-industry-university partnership to develop 

two different exascale machines. I wondered if you would be willing 

to describe what industry’s role should be in such a partnership 

and then describe the benefits of having a university as part of this 

partnership? 

Dr. GILES. Yes, I would be happy to address that and some of my 

written testimony does get to that point. I think that ASCR’s work 

has helped to start a virtuous cycle with industry, academia, and 

the labs in developing and looking forward to the path for exascale 

so that in collaboration with industry we are able to have government funds help to stimulate research and investigation in areas 

that are important for building the next generation scale of computers before that is actually competitive or something that is in 

the competitive spirit of the industry, but then industries impact 

is to help define what is sufficiently along the lines of work that 

they can build and build on into something that they would be interested in from their perspective, that we find an accommodation. 

In the co-design methodology that I mentioned represents the 

pattern of developing new software and algorithms as—in the context of hardware that is evolving and to help use those needs from 

the scientific community, from the universities and the labs to help 

define what kind of hardware makes sense so that the—this goes 

back to the idea of building an ecosystem that supports rapid advances in scientific computing that links together all those elements. 

I do want to thank you so much for the legislation you propose 

that we discussed last time and which made it out of the House, 
72 

as I understand it, but not all the way through the end of the process. You know, I think it is a really important step that we explicitly fund the development of that next generation better systems. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thanks, Dr. Giles. 

Quickly, Mr. Augustine, I would first like to thank you for all of 

your work. You have been a leader in this and in so many other 

spaces, it is amazing. Thank you. 

I had the pleasure of sitting down with your colleague Dr. Neal 

Lane to discuss local economic development potential for the national labs in reference to the Restoring the Foundation report. 

Many of the recommendations from this discussion echoed my previous passed legislation, the DOE Labs Modernization and Technology Transfer Act, which the Bipartisan Policy Center listed in 

their doable items, which there aren’t too many of, for the 114th 

Congress. I wonder if you could make a comment more generally 

on this bill and the needs and benefits for making the labs more 

nimble and open to the public? 

Mr. AUGUSTINE. Well, yes. One of the things that certainly relates to what you raise is that the labs are able to build major facilities that individual firms can’t afford to build. Fermilab is a 

classic example. And if they are not available to the public or industry by and large, then we don’t begin to get the value from 

them that we could get. Some of the legislation that you describe 

takes important steps in this regard. 

I guess I would say in terms of a broad answer—and I realize 

that we are running out of your time—that the bad news is that 

we spend, as I said, a 10th of a percent of the GDP on research. 

The good news is you could double that and only have to allocate 

a 10th of a percent of the GDP. And so the opportunity is probably 

there to make major changes. 

I go back to one of the studies that you refer to. We discovered 

that we spend more on potato chips in this country than we spend 

on research on clean energy. That just doesn’t make sense. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Well, again, I want to thank you all for being 

here. 

Thank you, Chairman. 

And real quick, just thank you, Dr. Crowley, too, for the shoutout to Argonne and the recent recognition there. That is fantastic. 

So thank you so much. 

Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. Thank you, sir. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Massie from Kentucky. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My question is really for anybody up there that cares to comment, but it seems like 20 years ago there was the apocryphal prediction that we would run out of available computing power with 

silicon, yet here we are still on silicon. What is the next step after 

silicon? And since we didn’t run out of power with silicon how 

much further can we go on silicon? 

Mr. Turek, it looks like you are interested in answering that. 

Mr. TUREK. I will take the first shot at least. 

We are at an apocryphal time and to a certain extent you could 

characterize the industry as putting a Band-Aid over this problem. 

So the limitations of silicon are embedded in physics. We are at 
73 

those limits today. I think the last time I saw an advertisement on 

TV about buy a computer because the processor is faster was January 2001. You don’t have a 10 gigahertz processor. You are never 

going to see one either because the physics are limiting. 

So instead what the industry has done is it has spewed out massive amounts of cores, lower-power compute elements that are 

ganged together to work in concert on the problems at hand. The 

problem is you don’t get a linear scalability of the compute effect. 

So in other words, if I have four cores, I don’t get four times the 

compute capability of one core. Maybe I get 2.5. And as I scale up 

to a million, I am not getting a million times; I am getting something far less than that. 

So we are Band-Aiding our way through this limitation at the 

physics level. There are more materials and so on that are coming 

forth and whether it is carbon nano tubes or something else, but 

physics is a limiting factor here. 

The way you deal with this ultimately is you look at the architecture of how these systems are put together and the composite set 

of technologies that let you deal with the problem. Advances in networking technology, memory systems, all these things need to be 

looked at in total to begin to push the ball forward but it is the 

real slog now. Believe me, in 1996 I knew how to build a Roadrunner system, not a problem; it was just a matter of hard work. 

That was the first petascale system on the planet. In 2005 I didn’t 

know how to get to exascale and still struggle today. We are up 

against real limits. 

Mr. MASSIE. So does anybody else care to talk about that? 

Dr. GILES. Yes, just to add one quick observation. The Secretary 

of Energy Advisory Board Task Force considered very seriously this 

question about the relationship of what we are doing now to—for 

the future, and one of the things that became very clear is that because the limitations and the possibilities and opportunities are 

physics-based and the DOE labs are the premier research set of facilities for the physical sciences, that in some ways DOE with its 

computing interest and capability and the labs is in an excellent 

position to do the research needed to move beyond silicon and 

CMOS and what we are doing now to the next generation, whether 

that involves, as David said, superconducting technology or quantum technology, the labs are in a really good position to investigate. 

Mr. MASSIE. That was going to be my next question. So obviously 

we have already hit the physical limits of silicon and the speed of 

light and energy density and all that stuff, and we have BandAided that with architecture or maybe that is the way around it, 

but we have diminishing returns to putting more cores in there. 

What are the next promising platforms and what role will our research that we are paying for here in Congress play? What is the 

next transistor? What is going to be the next paradigm shift and 

what role does our research play in that? 

Mr. TUREK. Well, I will make a brief comment. There is no silver 

bullet. There is nothing I can point to that says the problems of the 

future are done; we can simply move along as systematically as we 

have over the last 50 years or so. When I talk about architecture 

I mean different approaches to solve the problem. 
74 

Today, one of the techniques that is being explored and reflected 

in the CORAL program at the DOE is the employment of accelerators, specialized processors attached to conventional processors to 

give an overall speed-up in compute capability. We pioneered this, 

by the way, with a cell processor at Los Alamos ten years ago, 

which was an accelerator-based kind of technology. That is a new 

idea. Accelerators have been thought of over many years but never 

gained acceptance because we could leverage the evolution of silicon to overcome the limits. No longer possible, now there is an embrace of accelerators. So you see a lot of different kinds of accelerators come into play and applied in very unique and interesting 

kinds of ways. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you very much. I am excited to see what the 

next breakthrough is. I realize there is no silver bullet and we have 

got to use a shotgun, but I trust that we will come up with something. Thank you. 

Chairman WEBER. Thank you. And I thank the witnesses for 

their valuable testimony and the Members for their questions. 

The record will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and written questions from the Members. 

So thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Dr. Giles. The witnesses 

are excused and the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 10:07 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(75) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
76 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Mr. Norman Augustine 
77 

Responses by Dr. Roscoe Giles 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 

Responses by Mr. David Turek 
83 
84 
85 
86 

Responses by Dr. James Crowley 
87 
88 
89 

Æ