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AMERICA’S NEXT GENERATION SUPERCOMPUTER: 

THE EXASCALE CHALLENGE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013 

Serial No. 113–31 

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 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

VACANCY 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

HON. CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming, Chair 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 

Page 

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

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

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Cynthia Lummis, Chairwoman, Subcommittee 

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

Representatives .................................................................................................... 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

Statement by Representative Randy Hultgren, Committee on Science, Space, 

and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................... 11 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11 

Statement by Representative Eric Swalwell, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 12 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Witnesses: 

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

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 16 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 18 

Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment 

and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 32 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 34 

Ms. Dona Crawford, Associate Director for Computation, Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 46 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 48 

Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, 

University of Iowa 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 60 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 62 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 71 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Roscoe Giles, Chairman, Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee .................................................................................................................... 84 

Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment 

and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory .............................................. 91 

Ms. Dona Crawford, Associate Director for Computation, Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory ............................................................................................. 95 

Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, 

University of Iowa ................................................................................................ 102 

(1) 

AMERICA’S NEXT GENERATION 

SUPERCOMPUTER: 

THE EXASCALE CHALLENGE 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Cynthia Lummis 

[Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. Good morning. The Subcommittee will 

come to order. And we are delighted to have a terrific panel here 

this morning, so welcome to our hearing entitled ‘‘America’s Next 

Generation Supercomputer: the Exascale Challenge.’’ In front of 

you are packets containing the written testimonies, biographies, 

and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today’s witness panel. 

And now, I will recognize myself for five minutes for and opening 

statement followed by our Ranking Member Mr. Swalwell. 

The development and expanded availability of supercomputers 

has enabled society to push the frontiers of nearly every scientific 

discipline, and accelerate applications of that science in countless 

fields. It has enabled modeling and simulation necessary to address 

national security needs. It drives the boundaries of medical research, reduces cost to develop new products, and improves materials design processes, just to name a few. 

High performance computing has also revolutionized how the energy sector operates. Advanced modeling and simulation techniques, driven by computer algorithms and faster computing 

speeds, improve the efficiency of energy production and consumption technologies. 

These advancements ultimately trace back to Federal investments in basic research that provided the foundation for most of 

today’s computing technologies. From the first megaflop supercomputers of the 1960s, the Federal investments have led to push 

across each landmark thousand-fold speed barrier to gigaflops, 

teraflops, and petaflops. I always think of floppy-eared rabbits and 

when I was a kid showing critters in 4H, I should have named 

them Giga, Tera, and Peta, but I just didn’t know about it back 

then because that proceeded the first megaflop. 

Throughout this computing age, we have witnesses—we have 

witnessed yesterday’s supercomputers become today’s desktop computers and consumer devices often in incredibly short time frames. 

The spillover benefits to society are countless and immeasurable. 

The Department of Energy, led by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program, plays a critical role in driving these computing technology breakthroughs. DOE supports world-class computational science facilities, such as the National Energy Research 

Scientific Computing Center. Additionally, DOE funds cutting-edge 

applied mathematics research and next-generation networking activities. 

DOE’s next major computing challenge, constructing an 

‘‘exascale’’ computer system that is a thousand times faster than 

current world-leading supercomputers, may be the most daunting. 

Key scientific and technical obstacles associated with the architecture and energy efficiency of an exascale system must be overcome, 

and an immense amount of resources and effort will be required. 

As we head down this inevitable path to exascale computing, it 

is important we take time to plan and budget thoroughly to ensure 

a balanced approach that ensures broad buy-in from the scientific 

computing community. The Federal Government has limited resources and taxpayer funding must be spent on the most impactful 

projects. We need to ensure DOE efforts to develop an exascale system can be undertaken in concert with other foundational advanced scientific computing activities. This morning, we will hear 
10 

testimony from expert witnesses regarding how best to achieve this 

balance. 

I would like to recognize if he is here, yes, he has come in, a 

leader in this effort, my colleague on the Energy Subcommittee, 

Representative Randy Hultgren. 

I would now like to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Illinois to summarize the discussion draft of his bill, 

‘‘American High-End Computing Leadership Act.’’ 

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Lummis follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN CYNTHIA LUMMIS

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

high performance computing research and development challenges and opportunities. 

The development and expanded availability of supercomputers has enabled society 

to push the frontiers of nearly every scientific discipline, and accelerate applications 

of that science in countless fields. It has enabled modeling and simulation necessary 

to address national security needs. It drives the boundaries of medical research, reduces cost to develop new products, and improves materials design processes, just 

to name a few areas. 

High performance computing has also revolutionized how the energy sector operates. Advanced modeling and simulation techniques, driven by complex algorithms 

and faster computing speeds, improve the efficiency of energy production and consumption technologies. 

These advancements ultimately trace back to Federal investments in basic research that provided the foundation for most of today’s computing technologies. 

From the first megaflop supercomputers of the 1960s, Federal investments have led 

the push across each landmark thousand-fold speed barrier-to gigaflops, teraflops, 

and petaflops. Throughout this computing age, we have witnessed as yesterday’s 

supercomputers become today’s desktop computers and consumer devices often in 

incredibly short time frames. The spillover benefits to society are countless and immeasurable. 

The Department of Energy, led by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research 

program, plays a unique and critical role in driving these computing technology 

breakthroughs. DOE supports world-class computational science facilities, such as 

the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Additionally, DOE 

funds cutting edge applied mathematics research and next generation networking 

activities. 

DOE’s next major computing challenge-constructing an ‘‘exascale’’ computer system that is a thousand times faster than current world-leading supercomputers-may 

be the most daunting. Key scientific and technical obstacles associated with the architecture and energy efficiency of an exascale system must be overcome, and an 

immense amount of resources and effort will be required. 

As we head down this inevitable path to exascale computing, it is important we 

take time to plan and budget thoroughly to ensure a balanced approach that ensures broad buy-in from the scientific computing community. The Federal government has limited resources and taxpayer funding must be spent on the most 

impactful projects. We need to ensure DOE efforts to develop an exascale system 

can be undertaken in concert with other foundational advanced scientific computing 

activities. This morning, we will hear testimony from expert witnesses regarding 

how best to achieve this balance. 

I would like to recognize a leader of this effort, my colleague on the Energy Subcommittee, Representative Randy Hultgren. I would now like to yield the balance 

of my time to the gentleman from Illinois to summarize the discussion draft of his 

bill, ‘‘American High-End Computing Leadership Act.’’ 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing today. Exascale computing represents a brave new world of 

science for our Nation. The application of the next generation of 

supercomputers is vast. A thousand-fold increase in processing 

power will give us the intense computing tools necessary to ensure 

our national security by better testing our nuclear stockpile, revolutionized our understanding and treatment of complicated 
11 

healthcare problems like neurological diseases or the genetics underpinning cancer with the ability to model new treatments and 

ensure our Nation’s competitiveness in the big data economy of the 

21st century by spilling over knowledge and expertise into industry 

and academia. 

And while I can postulate further on some of the applied uses of 

faster machines, I also know that simply by making these investments in basic science needed to overcome challenges in the immensely massive parallelism, power management, new architecture, and programming models, we will enrich our Nation intellectually and ensure our labor force remains competitive. 

I think at that point I will yield back, Madam Chair. Let me follow up if I have another minute. Do I? 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Mr. Hultgren, you do. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Madam Chair, let me summarize my bill quickly. 

Thank you. 

My bill would amend the existing statute by specifying the need 

to target the specific challenges and power requirements and parallelism required to make the leap to exascale. It also will instruct 

the Secretary of Energy to conduct a coordinated research program 

to develop exascale computing systems and require an integrated 

strategy and program management plan to ensure the health of existing research activities is not harmed. 

The bottom line is we do not know all of the ways we will use 

this next-generation of supercomputers, but given the vast and unpredictable ways that computing technology has already enhanced 

every part of our lives and given the investments being made in 

other countries to deploy large-scale systems, it is more important 

than ever that we make this investment today. 

I look forward to hearing the witnesses, what they think of this 

legislative proposal, areas we can improve it, challenges that we 

will face. And with that, I do thank you. I apologize for my confusion here but I yield back to the Chairwoman. Thank you very 

much, Madam Chair. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hultgren follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE RANDY HULTGREN

Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding this hearing today. 

Exascale computing represents an exciting new world of science for our nation. 

The applications for the next generation of super computers are vast. 

A thousand fold increase in processing power will give us the intense computing 

tools necessary to ensure our national security by better testing our nuclear stockpile; revolutionize our understanding and treatment of complicated health care problems like neurological diseases or the genetics underpinning cancer with the ability 

to model new treatments; and ensure our nation’s competitiveness in the big data 

economy of the 21st century by spilling over knowledge and expertise into industry 

and academia. 

And while I can postulate further on some of the applied uses of faster machines; 

I also know that simply by making these investments in the basic science needed 

to overcome challenges in immensely massive parallelism, power management, new 

architectures and programming models, we will enrich our nation intellectually and 

ensure our labor force remains competitive. 

Madam Chair, my bill would amend the existing statute by specifying the need 

to target the specific challenges in power requirements and parallelism required to 

make the leap to exascale. It would also instruct the Secretary of Energy to conduct 

a coordinated research program to develop exascale computing systems, and require 
12 

an integrated strategy and program management plan to ensure the health of existing research activities is not harmed. 

The bottom line is, we do not know all of the ways we will use the next generation 

of supercomputers, but given the vast and unpredictable ways that computing technology has already enhanced every part of our lives, and given the investments 

being made in other countries to deploy large scale systems, it is more important 

than ever that we make this investment today. 

I look forward to hearing what the witnesses think of this legislative proposal, 

areas we can improve it, challenges we face, and with that I thank you and I yield 

back. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. The gentleman yields back. 

And I might add on a personal note, today, my daughter is being 

awarded her master’s degree in digital media from Columbia University. I unfortunately cannot be at her graduation because Congress is in session but I get to watch it on the computer, so I will 

get to see it. And I think to myself, first of all, what is a master’s 

degree in digital media? Somebody my age doesn’t even know what 

that is. And certainly, when I was her age, I could not have even 

begun to envision the career that would be open to her as of today, 

and the career that is open to her as of today is due in part to the 

investment that the people in this room and that the American 

people have made in computing, for science, and for the benefit of 

mankind. So this is a very important subject. 

The fact that it is such an important subject leads me to let you 

all know that there will be several comings and goings by Committee Members this morning. There are concurrent meetings 

going on around the buildings. In my case, we have the IRS in 

front of us down in Oversight and Government Reform and I know 

there are other Members that may have to come and go from time 

to time. We deeply appreciate your testimony here today. In my absence, our Vice Chair Mr. Weber will be in the chair, and of course, 

Mr. Swalwell, who is our Ranking Member, who I will recognize 

now, the gentleman from California, Mr. Swalwell. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Chairman Lummis. And also congratulations to your daughter on this achievement. And thank you 

for holding this hearing today. And I want to thank the witnesses 

for being here. I also thank the witnesses who are not from the 

15th Congressional District. We welcome you as well but especially 

welcome Ms. Crawford from Livermore, California. 

I am excited to learn more about the work that the DOE is doing 

in partnership with industry and our national laboratories, including both Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley national laboratories in 

particular and are carrying out to maintain the United States’ 

leadership in the critical area of high-performance computing. 

As I am sure the witnesses will all describe in more detail, this 

capability enables our best and brightest minds to gain new insights into societal concerns ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to 

climate change. Other examples of both industrial and academic research that benefit from our advanced, high-end computing capabilities include high-temperature superconductivity to significantly 

reduce energy losses in transmitting electricity; aerodynamic modeling for aircraft and vehicle design; pharmaceutical development; 

next-generation nuclear reactor design; fusion plasma modeling; 

and combustion simulation to guide the design of fuel-efficient 

clean engines such as work being carried out at the Sandia National Laboratory’s combustion research facility. 
13 

In short, many of the most pressing issues of our time, whether 

it is how we find our energy resources, how we make our energy 

resources more efficient, or how we solve the rising cost of 

healthcare can be solved through investments in high-performance 

computing. 

A focus of today’s hearing is the development of an exascale computing capability. Now, my understanding is that exascale is often 

interchangeably used with extreme scale to refer to the next generation of supercomputers in general, but it also refers to a computing system that would be able to carry out a million trillion operations per second. Yes, a million trillion or a 1 with 18 zeros after 

it. That is about 500 times faster than the world’s fastest computer 

today. Such a system would be critical to meeting the Nation’s 

needs in a number of important research areas like combustion 

science, climate science, modeling of the human brain, and ensuring the reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile. 

That said, as we pursue the next generation of supercomputing 

capabilities, which I fully support, I want to ensure that the Nation 

is getting the most bang for buck out of our current world-leading 

facilities. It is noteworthy that while Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Oak Ridge national laboratories are three of the most 

powerful supercomputing centers in the world, and they are addressing incredibly important scientific issues that really require 

their advanced computing capabilities. Lawrence Berkeley’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center actually 

serves thousands more users with only a fraction of those leadership machines’ computing power. 

The point is not every computational research effort requires the 

fastest most sophisticated system we can possibly build and I think 

we also need to work more to make sure that what is sometimes 

called capacity supercomputing is more accessible to both the academic and industrial research communities that could benefit. 

I have always believed whether it was as a local city councilman 

or a sitting Member of Congress that the government works best 

when we can share our resources with the private sector. It doesn’t 

serve anyone any good if we are just doing the research in the government and not transferring that research out to the private sector, and I think in high-performance computing we have already 

shown in our laboratories we are transferring it out. The transfer 

out makes us more efficient, can reduce healthcare costs, and also 

more importantly, especially in our area, it can create private-sector jobs on top of the thousands of jobs that already exist at our 

laboratories. 

So with that, I look forward to discussing these important issues 

with each of you today and I yield back the balance of my time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Swalwell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER ERIC SWALWELL

Thank you Chairman Lummis for holding this hearing today, and I also want to 

thank the witnesses for being here—even the ones from outside of the 15th District 

of California! 

I am excited to learn more about the great work that the Department of Energy 

in partnership with industry and our national laboratories, including both Lawrence 

Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in particular, are carrying 
14 

out to maintain and advance U.S. leadership in the critical area of high performance 

computing. 

As I’m sure the witnesses will describe in more detail, this capability enables our 

best and brightest scientists to gain new insights into societal concerns ranging from 

Alzheimer’s disease to climate change. Other examples of both industrial and academic research that benefit from our advanced high-end computing capabilities include: high temperature superconductivity to significantly reduce energy losses in 

transmitting electricity; aerodynamic modeling for aircraft and vehicle design; pharmaceutical development; next generation nuclear reactor design; fusion plasma modeling; and combustion simulation to guide the design of fuel-efficient clean engines, 

such as work being carried out at the Sandia National Laboratories’ Combustion Research Facility. 

A focus of today’s hearing is the development of an exascale computing capability. 

Now, my understanding is that ‘‘exascale’’ is often used interchangeably with ‘‘extreme scale’’ to refer to the next generation of supercomputers in general, but it also 

refers to a computing system that would be able to carry out a million trillion operations per second. (Yes, a million trillion, or a 1 with 18 zeros after it.) That’s about 

500 times faster than the world’s fastest computers at today. Such a system would 

be critical to meeting that nation’s needs in a number of important research areas 

like combustion science, climate science, modeling of the human brain, and ensuring 

the reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile. 

That said, as we pursue the next generation of supercomputing capabilities–which 

I fully support–I also want to ensure that the nation is getting the most bang per 

buck out of our current world-leading facilities. It is noteworthy that while Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories are 3 of the most 

powerful supercomputers in the world, and they are addressing incredibly important 

scientific issues that really require their advanced computing capabilities, Lawrence 

Berkeley’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center actually serves 

thousands of more users with only a fraction of those leadership machines’ computing power. The point is, not every computational research effort requires the 

fastest, most sophisticated system we can possibly build, and I think we also need 

to do more to make what’s sometimes called ‘‘capacity’’ supercomputing more accessible to both the academic and industrial research communities that could benefit. 

With that, I look forward to discussing these important issues with each of you 

today, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell. 

If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 

statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 

point. 

Well, at this time I would like to introduce our witnesses, and 

the fun part today is we have two Members here who have witnesses from their districts. So I will start by introducing Dr. Roscoe 

Giles, Chairman of the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory 

Committee of the Department of Energy and Professor at Boston 

University. Dr. Giles—and I have that right, don’t I, Dr. Giles? 

Thank you. He has served in a number of leadership roles in the 

community including Member of the Board of Associated Universities, Inc., Chair of the Boston University Faculty Council, and 

General Chair of the SC Conference in 2002. He received his Ph.D. 

in physics from Stanford University in 1975. That is a remarkable 

record of achievement, Dr. Giles. Thank you for being here. 

At this time, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Illinois, 

Mr. Hultgren, to introduce our second witness. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Our second witness is Dr. Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment, and Life Sciences at Argonne 

National Laboratory. He heads Argonne’s Computational Genomics 

Program and co-leads the DOE’s laboratory planning effort for 

exascale computing research. He is also Professor of computer 

science at the University of Chicago and is involved in several 

interdisciplinary studies at the Argonne University of Chicago 
15 

Computation Institute and at the Argonne University of Chicago 

Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology. He is doing amazing 

work at Argonne and at the University and the entire Illinois community is proud of his contributions to this cutting edge field of 

science. We are very glad to have you here, Dr. Stevens. Thank 

you. 

I yield back. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you for your attendance today. That 

was my field although at a much lower level of academic achievement, Dr. Stevens. We are delighted you are here. 

Now, I would like to yield to the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Swalwell, to introduce our third witness. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Chairman Lummis. 

And I have been very eager on this Committee to have a witness 

from Lawrence Livermore laboratory. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. I can testify to that. 

Mr. SWALWELL. I thank you for allowing this witness to be here 

today. Lawrence Livermore is the largest employer in my Congressional District and I have to really just commend the laboratory for 

their advocacy of the issues facing Lawrence Livermore. They are 

in constant contact with our office and this Committee so I am honored to today introduced Dona Crawford, who is the Associate Director of Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

Ms. Crawford is responsible for a staff of roughly 900 to develop 

and deploy an integrated computing environment for advanced simulations of complex physical phenomena like climate change, clean 

energy creation, biodefense, and nonproliferation. She has served 

on Advisory Committees for the National Academies and the National Science Foundation and currently serves as co-Chair of the 

Council on Competitiveness High-Performance Computing Advisory 

Committee, and is a member of IBM’s Deep Computing Institute 

External Advisory Board. Ms. Crawford has a master’s degree in 

operations research from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Redlands, California. 

Ms. Crawford, thank you for being here today and I yield back 

the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Swalwell. And my first exposure to Livermore, I used to walk around the lab. My first job 

out of college was working for a rodeo company in Northern California, and we were putting on the rodeo at Livermore. 

Mr. SWALWELL. It is the fastest rodeo in the world. Did you know 

that? 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. You know, considering the rodeo company 

I worked for, I would believe that. Those rodeos ran like that and 

I used to go for walks around the lab just to get some exercise 

when I was there at Livermore putting on rodeos. So I know where 

you are, at least I knew where you are when I was a young college 

graduate in my first job. 

Our final witness is Dr. Daniel Reed, Vice President of Research 

and Economic Development at the University of Iowa. Previously, 

he served as a Senior Leader at Microsoft serving as Microsoft’s 

Computing Strategist to Corporate Vice President for Extreme 

Computing, I love that, and Technology Policy. He received his 

Ph.D. in computer science in 1983 from Purdue University. 
16 

As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to 

five minutes each, after which the Members of the Committee will 

have five minutes each to ask questions. I now recognize Dr. Giles 

for five minutes to present his testimony with deep gratitude to all 

of you for your attendance today. Dr. Giles. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. ROSCOE GILES, CHAIRMAN, 

ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

Dr. GILES. Yes, thank you, Chairman Lummis. And thanks to 

Members of the Committee for inviting me to testify today. 

I think the bill you are considering is very, very important for 

our field and for maintaining the Nation’s leadership in computing 

and computational science. I am testifying today in my role as 

Chair of the Advisory Committee to ASCR and I will try to reflect 

that committee’s views of some elements of the ASCR program and 

hope to demonstrate that we are ready to move forward and sort 

of eager to move forward in this direction. And it is important that 

we do so. 

The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research has programs and investments that include computer and networking facilities that support DOE’s science programs; leadership computing 

facilities for which the exascale discussion is very directly relevant 

with unique high-end capabilities made available to DOE and to all 

the Nation, including industry; applied mathematics research 

whose results provide the framework for future applications and 

systems; computer science system and software research, whose results both enable applications of current systems and chart the direction for future systems. 

And beyond this, ASCR investments—ASCR is the abbreviation 

for Advanced Scientific Computer Research—we get lost in acronyms sometimes. ASCR investments have also built human expertise in the scientific and technical staff at the labs and through attention to integrating the next generation of computational science 

leaders into DOE programs and facilities through programs like 

the Computational Science Graduate Fellows Program, which I also 

am involved with. 

It is hard in these few minutes to state the breadth and depth 

of science productivity that is being enabled by these machines. We 

now see the initial results of the petascale era. As one measure, we 

might mention that more than 2,000 peer-reviewed research articles based directly on projects supported by ASCR computing facilities were published in 2012 alone. One I love is a trillion-particle 

simulation in cosmology, since I started out in the ’80s struggling 

to do a million-particle simulation of molecular dynamics, and to go 

another factor of a million is astonishing. 

In 2009 our advisory committee was charged with reviewing 

ASCR’s body of work on exascale computing. We delivered the 

Rosner report, ‘‘The Opportunities and Challenges of Exascale 

Computing,’’ in fall of 2010. We found the case for exascale computing compelling and recommended the DOE should proceed expeditiously with an exascale initiative so that it continues to lead in 

using extreme scale computing to meet important national needs. 

As you have heard mentioned this morning, when we wrote that, 

we were talking about growing a factor of 1,000 forward in the fu-
17 

ture. Now, that is a factor of 500. I am glad to see that we are 

starting to in this bill to really move forward on this. And we have 

had a sense in the committee that we have been waiting for that 

forward motion from the system. 

Some of the—during this time, ASCR has been busy doing 

foundational research to make this possible, so there—and we will 

hear more about it, I am sure, from other speakers. But the establishment of co-design centers, computing research, and applied 

mathematics research and some prototype projects with fast forward and design forward that are bringing us in this direction, and 

I think we are making progress but not the progress we should be 

making at the scale we should be making it, and hopefully, the bill 

will help deal with that issue. 

Our committee has been asked to review ASCR facility plans for 

the relatively short-term future of the next ten years, not including 

exascale deployment, and we found those facility plans to be very 

sound and compelling that involve enhancements to the petascale 

systems. We have also recently examined the intersection of big 

data needs within the Department of Energy and ASCR’s exascale 

program and found them quite convergent. The exascale technologies we are talking about developing will be essential in systems that analyze big data problems of the nature that come to the 

Department of Energy from both experiment and theory, and we 

have a—quite a long and detailed report about that. 

I wanted to just summarize by saying I am very, very glad to see 

the legislation that we have here. I am very supportive of the direction we are going. I would only ask that the funding level be sure 

to be sufficient for the scope of our dreams. Thank you. 

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

Now, I recognize Dr. Stevens to present his testimony. Turn your 

mike on. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. RICK STEVENS, 

ASSOCIATE LABORATORY DIRECTOR FOR COMPUTING, 

ENVIRONMENT AND LIFE SCIENCES, 

ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Dr. STEVENS. Oh, thanks. Thank you. Madam Chair, Ranking 

Member Swalwell, Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate this 

opportunity to talk to you about the future of high-performance 

computing research and development and about the importance of 

U.S. leadership in the development and deployment of exascale 

computing. 

In my own work at Argonne and the University of Chicago I split 

my time between trying to advance high-performance computing 

architectures and systems and doing research on how to do computational genomics in the pursuit of problems in energy, the environment, and infectious disease. And those projects have given me 

insight not only on the underlying technology but on the impact of 

applications. 

I believe that advancing American leadership in high-performance computing is vital to our national interest. High-performance 

computing is a critical technology for the Nation, and it is also the 

underlying foundation for advancing progress in modeling and simulation and big data. It serves both of these needs. It is also needed 

by all branches of science and engineering for forward progress. It 

is used more and more by U.S. industry to maintain a competitive 

edge in the development of new products and services, and it is 

emerging as a critical policy tool for government leaders who can 

rely on simulations to add insight to policy or technical decisions. 

Today, the United States is the undisputed leader in the development and use of high-performance computing technologies. However, other nations are increasingly aware of the strategic importance of HPC and are creating supercomputing research programs 

that challenge our leadership. 

Japan has significant programs for over a decade in this area. 

They have fielded large-scale machines that are comparable to the 

machines in the United States. But China is emerging as a serious 

player as well and Europe has been investing in revitalization of 

their own high-performance computing sector. So we now have at 

least three sectors on the planet besides the United States making 

serious progress. 

All have set their sights on the development of machines that are 

1,000 times faster than those most powerful machines today. Everyone is looking at exascale. And achieving this goal is important. 

The drive to exascale will have a sustained impact on American 

competitiveness. It gives companies and researchers the means and 

the impetus for developing new processes, new services, and new 

products. 

For example, we need increased compute power to enable first 

principle simulations of materials for energy storage that would 

give us access to a potential 500-mile battery pack for electric cars. 

We want to build end-to-end simulations of advanced nuclear reac-
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tors that are modular, safe, and affordable. We want to revolutionize small business manufacturing and digital fabrication and 

put in place a digital supply chain that would potentially revolutionize the economy in the United States. 

We want to model controls for power grids that have significant 

amount of renewable energy, and we want to increase the resolution of climate models to provide more details on regional impacts. 

And finally, we want to create a personalized medicine that can incorporate an individual’s genomic information into a specific customized plan for prevention or treatment of disease. 

All of these challenges require machines that are thousands of 

times faster than the current machines. The development of practical exascale system, however, will also mean affordable petascale 

systems and broad deployment, broad accessibility. 

The DOE Office of Science supercomputer centers at Argonne, 

Berkeley, and Oak Ridge are currently oversubscribed by at least 

a factor of three. This means that not all of the science that we 

could be doing on these machines is getting done. With current 

funding levels, these systems can only be upgraded about once 

every four to five years. And at current research—at current levels 

of research investment, the U.S. vendors are not likely to reach an 

exascale performance level that we can afford to deploy until considerably after 2020. This is a problem for us if we want to maintain our leadership. 

Both China and Japan are working on plans to reach the level by 2020 or before. Japan is building a $1.1 billion investment program aiming to deploy exascale machines by 2020, and China has 

announced a goal to reach exascale before 2020. China is aggressively spending on infrastructure for supercomputing and succeeding in deploying large-scale systems rivaling the largest systems deployed in the United States. It is widely expected they will 

regain lead on this capability this year, although their designs are 

mostly based on incorporating U.S. components. In the future, they 

plan to deploy systems based on Chinese components. 

I have been working since 2007 building a plan with my colleagues at the laboratories, academia, and DOE, and we identified 

five hurdles that we must cross in order to reach exascale. We have 

to reduce systems powered by a factor of 50; we must improve 

memory performance and cost by a factor of 100; we must improve 

our ability to program these systems; we must increase the parallelism in our applications; and we must improve reliability. These 

are not simple tasks but these are very important if we are to 

reach this goal. And I believe we have a duty to move as swiftly 

as we can on this objective. 

Thank you. I would be more than happy to answer your questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Stevens follows:] 
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Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Dr. Stevens. 

I recognize Ms. Crawford for her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MS. DONA CRAWFORD, 

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR COMPUTATION, 

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I thank you. I thank Chair Lummis and I thank 

you, Mr. Vice Chairman Weber and Ranking Member Swalwell, for 

inviting me to be here today. I ask that my full statement as submitted to the Committee made part of the hearing record, and if 

I may, I will summarize. 

Mr. WEBER. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I am Dona Crawford, Associate Director of Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I will shorten that by saying LLNL or Livermore. Livermore is a national security laboratory of the National Nuclear Security Administration 

of the Department of Energy and home to Sequoia, one of the fastest computers in the world. 

Livermore has the responsibility for maintaining the safety, security, and effectiveness of the Nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent 

through the Stockpile Stewardship Program. High-performance 

computing has been a core competency of the lab to meet this mission need since over 60 years. In fact, the NNSA labs, working in 

close partnership with U.S. HPC industry, were at the forefront of 

the last revolutionary design shift in HPC computer architectures 

and applications development. That is the foundation of today’s 

HPC systems. 

Over the past 20 years, the NNSA labs learned many valuable 

lessons, including how to best structure R&D efforts to develop 

computing architectures that meet our demanding mission requirements while cost-effectively leveraging market-driven technology 

within industry. These lessons are very valuable in our efforts to 

develop exascale computing. 

I applaud the Committee for its determined efforts to sustain 

U.S. leadership in this vitally important and increasingly competitive arena of high-performance computing. It is imperative that the 

United States embark on an R&D program to develop new technologies and computer architectures to support exascale computing. 

My main point of emphasis today is straightforward. This pursuit must be a joint Office of Science/NNSA effort working in tandem through partnership with U.S. HPC industry to ensure system 

architectures that meet Office of Science and NNSA mission requirements. Working together, the Office of Science and NNSA 

have combined scarce resources and have already initiated a number of R&D efforts and contracts with industrial partners but lack 

the resources to invest at the magnitude necessary to assure success over the next decade. 

Due to the technically challenging nature of developing exascale 

supporting technologies in computing capability, it is vitally important to ensure there are competitive teams each with Office of 

Science and NNSA laboratories partnered with U.S. HPC industry 

collaborators. Equally important is the development of an integrated strategy and program management plan. 
47 

Current U.S. leadership in HPC is a direct result of the Nation’s 

investment in computational capability to support the Stockpile 

Stewardship Program. U.S. HPC investment has provided significant computing capability to maintain the U.S. nuclear deterrent 

and this computing capability enables us to simulate in 2–D at 

high resolution and high physics fidelity or simulate in 3–D at low 

resolution. Today, we cannot simulate in 3–D at high resolution 

and high physics fidelity which will be required for the stockpile 

mission needs. Therefore, a new architecture enabling exascale 

computing is required for the NNSA mission. 

This will not be easy. Development of exascale-class systems cannot be achieved through a straightforward refinement of today’s 

technologies. Surmounting multiple technical issues will require 

sustained research and development effort. But there is no doubt 

exascale computing will yield valuable benefits to near-term mission requirements, as well as to U.S. economic competitiveness. 

Over the last two decades, supercomputers have transformed the 

way the world conducts scientific research and has enabled discovery and development across a broad set of disciplines. In a 2008 

U.S. Council on Competitiveness report, the Council states, ‘‘supercomputing is part of the corporate arsenal to beat rivals by staying 

one step ahead of the innovation curve. It allows companies to design products and analyze data in ways once unimaginable.’’ 

In one example, Livermore is leveraging its HPC capabilities in 

the California Energy Systems for the 21st Century Initiative. The 

California Public Utilities Commission and state investor-owned 

utilities are collaborating with Livermore to improve and expand 

energy systems to meet our future energy needs. The owners, operators, regulators, and a joint team of technical experts will use the 

Nation’s most advanced modeling simulation and analytical tools to 

gain unprecedented insight and generate new data to reduce risk 

and inform solutions to issues facing 21st-century energy systems 

such as renewable energy integration and use of smart grid technology. 

There are many other examples that highlight the importance of 

supercomputing and reinforce the value of maintaining U.S. HPC 

leadership. For now, let me close again by saying thank you and 

I look forward to working with the Committee to ensure continued 

U.S. HPC leadership. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Crawford follows:] 
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Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Ms. Crawford. 

Dr. Reed, I recognize you for your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. DANIEL REED, 

VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC 

DEVELOPMENT, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 

Dr. REED. Thank you. Chair Lummis, Vice Chair Weber, Ranking Member Swalwell, Members of the Subcommittee, my name is 

Dan Reed and I am the Vice President for Research and Economic 

Development at the University of Iowa. Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspectives on exascale computing and to respond to your questions regarding the American High-End Computing Leadership Act. 

Today, I would like to make four points regarding the exascale 

and high-performance computing program followed by a set of specific recommendations for the future. They are drawn from my 

nearly 30 years of experience in high-performance computing as a 

researcher, as an academic and corporate leader, as a Director of 

the National Science Foundation Supercomputing Center, and as a 

participant in national science and technology policy. 

First of all, as others have noted, high-performance computing is 

unique among scientific instruments. It is distinguished by its universality as an intellectual amplifier. New, more powerful supercomputers and computational models yield insights across all scientific and engineering disciplines. Advanced computing is also essential for analyzing the torrent of experimental data produced by 

scientific instruments and sensors, but it is about more than 

science. With advanced computing, real-time data fusion, and powerful numerical models, we have the potential to predict the tracks 

of devastating tornadoes such as the recent one in Oklahoma, saving lives, and ensuring the future of our children. 

My second point is that we face an uncertain future of computing 

and in particular high-performance computing leadership in this 

country. As others have noted, today, HPC systems from Oak 

Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, and Argonne National Laboratories occupy the first, second, and fourth place on the list of the world’s 

fastest computers. From this, one might surmise that all is well, 

yet U.S. leadership in both deployed HPC capability and in the 

technologies needed to create future systems is under challenge. 

Also, as others have noted, other nations are investing strategically in high-performance computing to advance national priorities. 

And the U.S. research community has repeatedly warned of the potential and actuality of eroding U.S. leadership in computing and 

in high-performance computing and emphasized the need for sustained and strategic investment. I have had the privilege of 

chairing many of those studies personally as a member PITAC, of 

PCAST, of National Academies’ boards, and yet many of these 

warnings have been largely unheeded. 

This brings me to my third point: the deep interdependence a 

basic research of vibrant U.S. computing industry and high-performance computing capability. It has long been axiomatic that the 

United States is the world leader in information technology. Our 

global leadership is not a birthright. As Andy Grove, the former 

CEO of Intel, noted in his famous aphorism ‘‘only the paranoid sur-
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vive.’’ U.S. leadership has been repeatedly earned and hard-fought 

based on continued Federal Government commitment to basic research, translation of that research into technological innovations, 

and the creation of new products by vibrant U.S. industry. 

This brings me to my fourth point. Computing is in deep transition to a new era with profound implications for the future of U.S. 

industry and HPC. My colleague Mr. Stevens touched on many of 

the issues around energy management and low-power devices and 

they are key to this topic. U.S. consumers and businesses are an 

increasingly small minority of the global market for mobile devices 

and for cloud services. 

We live in a post-PC world, as we all know, where U.S. companies compete in a global device ecosystem. Unless we are vigilant, 

these economic and technical changes could further shift the center 

of enabling technology R&D away from the United States with profound implications for our future HPC capability. Given this, what 

are my recommendations for the future? First and most importantly, we need to change our model for HPC research and deployment if the United States is to maintain its leadership. This must 

include deep and sustained interagency collaborations defined by a 

regularly updated strategic R&D plan and associated, verifiable 

metrics, commensurate budget allocations, and accountability to realize the plan’s goals. 

DOE’s partners—it needs the National Science Foundation, the 

Department of Defense, NIST and NIH, and other agencies to fulfill their important and complementary roles to DOE as engaged 

partners and supporters of basic research in technology development. We also need long-term industry engagement. 

Second, advanced HPC deployments are crucial, but the computing R&D journey is as important as any single system deployment. A vibrant U.S. ecosystem of talented and trained people and 

technical innovation is the true lifeblood of sustainable exascale 

computing. 

Finally, we must balance and embrace dual-use technology R&D 

supporting both high-performance computing and ensuring U.S. industry competitiveness. Neither HPC nor big data R&D can be sacrificed to advance the other, nor can hardware R&D dominate investments in algorithms, software, applications, and people. All are 

crucial. 

Finally, let me again commend this Committee for its continued 

commitment to high-performance computing. It has been my privilege to testify here many times. I appreciate the support of the 

Committee. And like my colleagues, I would be delighted to answer 

questions at the appropriate time. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Reed follows:] 
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Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Dr. Reed. And thank you all for your testimony. Man, lots of questions come to mind. And, you know, I 

guess I am an old-timer. I grew up back in the ’60s and we didn’t 

have computers, actually, we did. There was a flat table, you put 

a quarter in, and you chased a little Pac-Man around. Those were 

our computers. 

So I have a question here, and I think you kind of alluded to it, 

Dr. Reed, but I will ask this maybe starting with Dr. Giles. Is it 

Giles? 

Dr. GILES. Giles actually. 

Mr. WEBER. Giles, there you go. Thank you. 

In December 2011 Congress directed DOE to provide a strategic 

roadmap relating to the development of an exascale computing system. However, it is my understanding that after 15 months of the 

mandated completion date, the report is not yet finalized. Are you 

aware of this report? 

Dr. GILES. I am aware of it but my position is as an external representative of the community relative to ASCR so I am actually not 

an insider and I have not seen the report. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Dr. GILES. My understanding is exactly what you said. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Dr. GILES. But I don’t have anything unfortunately to add to 

that. 

Mr. WEBER. Nothing that you want to admit here publicly? 

Dr. GILES. No, actually nothing that I know. Anything I know, 

I will tell you. 

Mr. WEBER. Of course, our goal is to get it. Dr. Stevens, how 

about you? 

Dr. STEVENS. Well, I am aware of the report. I think it is a fine 

plan. I think that the internal process of getting that report out is 

what has blocked it, and I hope it reaches you quickly. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. Any help you can give us in that endeavor? 

Dr. STEVENS. I don’t have any specific recommendation except to 

just reemphasize that this is a critical plan that must be delivered 

and must be understood and articulated and executed. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. Thank you. And Ms. Crawford, I don’t mean 

to put you on the hot seat, but you are on the hot seat. 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I have nothing to add to what Dr. Stevens said. 

We are—we work at the laboratories and we are not part of the formal process between the DOE and the OMB to get that report out. 

I do support what is written in the report. The labs had a lot of 

input. I have not seen the final report. 

Mr. WEBER. And Dr. Reed, since you came to us with four points 

followed by recommendations, and I love that by the way. One of 

the things you said in your recommendation was the Department 

of Energy needs partners and long-term industry engagement. How 

do we expedite this? How do we make this happen? 

Dr. REED. Well, I think there are several points relevant. One is 

to recognize that, as I said, it is a false dichotomy to pit investment 

and some of these big data issues against high-performance computing, and I think frankly that is the root of some of the issues 

that we have to resolve in terms of moving forward. 
72 

In terms of the agencies, I believe, as I pointed out in my written 

testimony, that they each fulfill and historically have fulfilled important and complementary roles. The Department of Energy has 

been crucial in terms of advanced prototyping and deploying of the 

largest scale systems. The other agencies, though, provide support 

for enabling technology research. The National Science Foundation 

is one of the key enablers of that long-term research. 

What is important is that all those players be at the table and 

be engaged in supporting this integrated agenda. I think from the 

industry’s perspective to sort of answer your specific question, that 

is where industry—and I speak now again from my industry experience—it is important that the government be a committed and 

not fickle partner because the cost of money and the time planning 

for companies to execute is really crucial. And as I was saying, that 

combination is key to the future of the U.S. industry not just for 

high-performance computing but for how much information technology means to the U.S. economy. 

Mr. WEBER. All right. Thank you. And Ms. Crawford, let me 

come back to you. I think you said that this exascale computing either can’t or won’t be achieved through refinement. What did you 

mean by that? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. What I mean by that is the current system architectures today can’t simply be scaled up to produce a usable and 

cost-effective system. In principle, one could scale it up and you 

would have a system that would fill the room and would take 100 

megawatts of power, so that is not a cost-effective system. So the 

technologies have to change and we have to change in memory, in 

processors, in storage and networking and the programming models. And so that is what I mean by we can’t simply scale-up the 

programs of today. 

Mr. WEBER. Let me send that over to Dr. Stevens. And you mentioned about more or less power, I guess explain, you said less 

power. 

Dr. STEVENS. Right. We need to develop processors and memory 

and network components that consume considerably less power 

than current systems in order to scale-up. Right now, if we took a 

current kind of 10 petaflop system and scaled it up to an exascale, 

it would consume nearly a gigawatt of power, which is not feasible 

from a physical infrastructure standpoint or a—— 

Mr. WEBER. Right. 

Dr. STEVENS. —cost standpoint. So we need much more powerefficient devices. We also need better programming models because 

we are going to have to have a lot more parallelism inside these 

machines, 1 million—or 1,000 times more parallelism than we have 

now and we need ways of accessing that parallelism easily for programmers. So we have a lot of work to do. We know what to do. 

The DOE’s plan includes all of these activities so it is—I think the 

United States has a good position to do this; we just need the resources and the long-term commitment. 

Mr. WEBER. All right. Thank you. And I just want to make an 

observation before I yield to the Ranking Member and that is that 

I am glad to hear you say that national security is involved in this 

and tied up in this. That is very crucially important. And I think 

it will carry a lot of weight with Congress. Hopefully, it will. So I 
73 

thank you for your testimony. And with that, I yield to Mr. 

Swalwell. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And my questions will 

principally be for Ms. Crawford. 

First, does research in high-performance computing require the 

United States Government to make investments? And what I mean 

is why can’t we simply rely on the private sector to innovate and 

invent the next supercomputing architecture and software and then 

the government can just buy off-the-shelf technology? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. The short answer is, yes, the U.S. Government 

does need to invest in order to shape the exascale architectures for 

our mission needs. I can use an old example. When we started the 

Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative in the mid-1990s for the 

Stockpile Stewardship Program, industry and the consumer base 

was driving computing in a direction that would not meet our 

needs. And without our investment and our sustained investment 

and focused on cooperation and developing those processors that 

would meet our needs, we wouldn’t have had the computers and 

the computing capability that we have today. And so today, it is 

essential that we work together with the Office of Science laboratories and the NNSA laboratories to meet this mission needs. 

A shorter answer perhaps is that we are going to follow industry 

technologies. We can’t afford our own, you know, brand-new fab or 

our brand-new machines. What we want to do is pay on the margins to make those machines viable for our particular applications, 

which is mimicking the, you know, physical phenomena around us. 

Mr. SWALWELL. And when we look at our global competitors— 

Japan, China, India, Brazil, Russia—are they allowing or relying 

solely upon the private market or are they also having government 

investment at the table as well? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. There is strong government investment in Japan, China, Russia, the European Union. It is about $1.1 billion 

of investment in Japan. I would have to do the translation but the 

Ministry of Science and Technology five-year plan within China is 

investing and again not just in the hardware technologies but they 

are investing in the low-level software and the applications and 

making sure that they have the ecosystem in order to be able to 

deploy these systems effectively to make a difference to their underlying national security and economic competitiveness. So—— 

Mr. SWALWELL. So it sounds like—— 

Ms. CRAWFORD. —they are going to be large investments. 

Mr. SWALWELL. It sounds like for the United States to keep its 

edge in high-performance computing, we will need to continue to 

have the Federal Government make investments in these programs, is that right? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. Absolutely. 

Mr. SWALWELL. You talked a little bit about the joint partnership 

that must take place between NNSA and the Office of Science. Why 

is exascale capability so critical to DOE’s National Nuclear Security 

Administration? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. So then I will take a more focused view on just 

what is going on within the NNSA laboratories. It is our duty to 

assess the state of the stockpile on an annual basis, and the stockpile is being decreased in the numbers of weapons and the types 
74 

of weapons. That makes each single weapon remaining in the 

stockpile critically important to understand what is going on—— 

Mr. SWALWELL. Going toward a more leaner and meaner model, 

right? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. Leaner and meaner, and so those systems, as 

they age, they are being modernized as parts begin to fail, and so 

there are a number of things that we need to understand, you 

know, physically. You know, nuclear weapons are very complex. 

Think about parking your car in the garage and not turning it on 

but then wanting to be able to use it when you have to. You know, 

there are special materials that are changing over time and all 

kinds of things that go on just sitting there. 

We need high fidelity 3–D simulations to understand, you know, 

the initial conditions, the engineering features, safety features, the 

security features, and today, we cannot simulate at that high fidelity. So we have a number of—what we do is look at the kinds of 

calculations we are going to do and the kinds of computing that is 

required to do those calculations and so—for stockpile assessment, 

for the life extension programs for materials aging, for safety and 

surety, we have a range of exascale needs for the kinds of calculations that will have to go on in high fidelity, high-resolution 3–D, 

and they range from half-an-exascale to 1,000 exascales over the 

period of the next 10 years. 

Mr. SWALWELL. And Ms. Crawford—— 

Ms. CRAWFORD. Starting in about 2018. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Can you tell me more about Livermore’s work to 

address industrial and medical research needs, for example, your 

groundbreaking simulation of the human heart and your recent 

work with the California Energy Commission to improve energy 

management throughout the State and how exascale and HPC 

have affected our ability to do this? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I would be glad to. Having developed these capabilities for our mission drivers, then they are applicable, as Dr. 

Reed has said, to many other activities. Last year, we worked with 

IBM to develop a code called cardioid and it does—it models the 

electrical signals of the heart and it has the potential to be used 

to test drugs or medical devices, the code ran in nearly real-time 

across our 20 petaflop machine at Livermore beating an astonishing 60 beats per minute, so this is almost, you know, 12 percent 

of real-time. This calculation ran at 59 percent of peak of this machine, and that is—you know, it is very incredible and amazing 

thing to take a new code and put it on a new machine and run at 

this scale. It runs in a time to solution over 1,200 times faster than 

the previous state-of-the-art and this work shows promise for what 

advanced computing can do for understanding the human body. 

But it also demonstrated the extreme level of specificity and technical acuity required to achieve this result. And of course, these insights that we gain there will then be applied back to the stockpile. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. Well, thank you so much, Ms. Crawford. 

And thank you again to our other witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. HULTGREN. [Presiding] Thank you. And I will recognize myself for five minutes for a few questions. 

Part of our challenge as a Subcommittee is certainly to understand the right thing to do but also to present it to the larger Com-
75 

mittee and even beyond that to Members of Congress, so a couple 

of questions. Just if you have been messaging or how to present 

how important this is and why this is so important so I would address this first question to Dr. Stevens and Ms. Crawford. Wonder 

if you could just discuss the expected breadth of applications for 

the exascale computing. Is this something that could be used for a 

wide range of important disciplines from material to chemistry to 

medicine to nuclear science similar to the current supercomputers 

or is the expected range of disciplines more narrow such as climate 

science modeling or for weapons development? 

Dr. STEVENS. So the range of applications for exascale are no less 

broad than the current machines. In fact, there are many problems 

that haven’t been tried in the past, particularly in biomedical 

science where we were just afraid to try them. We didn’t have 

enough compute power. This idea of trying to build, say, detailed 

models in the human body, not just the heart but now include the 

lungs, include the nervous system, include the gastrointestinal system and build a virtual human, that is a problem that will require 

1,000 times current machines. It is not really feasible so people 

haven’t tried it. So my sense is that we will find more and more 

applications as we build more capable systems. 

We are also going to increase the ability for these systems to deal 

with data, and so a new class of applications that is emerging in 

both national security and in engineering research is this idea of 

doing modeling simulation with uncertainty quantification, this 

idea that not only will you get a result, you will get some confidence measure on that result. And that is something that requires hundreds of times more compute power than the current capability which means you can only do one simulation. 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I second everything that Dr. Stevens said. And 

it is limitless. Computing is so foundational. Anything that—any 

physical process that you can represent mathematically, which are 

most of them, you can then model in the computer with great fidelity. And the greater the fidelity we have, the better we can understand the world around us. And so I can just go on and on and on 

but, you know, we work at our laboratory in a number of areas 

with industry, with other national laboratories, with academia to 

make sure that we are applying these to the breadth of possibilities. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Well, Ms. Crawford, if I can get into just a little 

bit more specific and really following up on the Ranking Member’s 

discussion and also on the Vice Chairman’s of what does speak to 

Members of Congress and inspire us to make a commitment, especially a financial commitment at a time like this, and certainly, one 

of those is national security. 

So I wondered if you could just talk briefly. Is exascale computing considered critical to advancing national security, and if so, 

has the National Nuclear Security Administration gone on record 

to say that? If so, how is the NNSA prepared to financially contribute to this effort and what would be an appropriate percentage 

contribution to an exascale computer from NNSA, would you say? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. There is a lot of questions there so—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. Yes. 

Ms. CRAWFORD. —let’s see if I can remember them. 
76 

Mr. HULTGREN. The first thing is have they gone on record of 

saying that this is a key component? And then basically then what 

kind of commitment should we expect from them? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. Computing is the integrating element of maintaining the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons 

stockpile without returning to underground tests. So by integrating 

element, what I mean is we have the old test data, we have aboveground small experiments that we are doing, and we have a lot of 

theory and we have our new models. And we are bringing this all 

together in the computer. So this is an integrating element and 

this is the only way that we know to understand what is going on 

in the nuclear weapon. And so for that reason, we believe that it 

is extremely important. 

The NNSA is making an investment in the Advanced Scientific 

Computing Program. To maintain leadership, you need to have a 

base program. You need to have, you know, sort of a near-term program and you need to have a far-reaching program. Currently, the 

Office of Science and the NNSA both have a very strong base program. We have heard about the wonderful facilities at the laboratories, and of course it is not just the computer hardware itself but 

it is the applications that help us understand the world around us. 

We are investing with the Office of Science in some near-term research with industrial partners to look at some of those long lead 

time technology changes that need to be made. We need to make 

additional investments that are not in our current budgets in the 

programming environments for the exascale computing and in the 

math libraries so that we can actually use this billion-way parallelism. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Okay. I see my time is expired. At this point, I 

hope that we will have an opportunity to have a second round of 

questioning as well. 

Mr. SWALWELL. I don’t have any objection. 

Mr. HULTGREN. We can talk about that. Well, let’s go ahead and 

we will recognize Mr. Veasey from Texas. Okay. Then Mr. Lipinski 

from Illinois is recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I wanted to ask everyone on the panel a question about international partnerships. You know, obviously this cuts both ways. 

You can reduce the cost of reaching exascale capabilities with international partnerships but then there is the issue of, you know, 

damaging our Nation’s economic competitiveness, potentially our 

national security, because we are not doing this on our own. Now, 

where do you come down on this? Is it worthwhile and how far 

should we go in international partnerships and at what point is it 

still an advantage? At what point does it become a disadvantage 

for us economically, giving up our lead on high-end computing? So 

whoever wants to start with that one. Dr. Stevens? 

Dr. STEVENS. I will start. So I think the primary opportunity in 

international collaboration is in software, and in particular, the 

components of software that are open source that right now most 

of the software that runs on these machines other than the applications is built on—based on open source technologies developed 

largely in the United States. That is a significant lift to move all 

of that software to next-generation platforms, and international col-
77 

laboration can help there provided that the software is—stays in 

the open. 

I think where we don’t want to go at least in the near term is 

in deep hardware partnerships internationally. I think that is a 

place where we want to maintain our competitive edge. We have 

significant advantages with the U.S. vendor community and we 

want to maintain that as long as we can. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. Anyone else? Ms. Crawford? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. Yes. I would like to add that it is very important 

that the United States maintain the key intellectual property for 

the next supercomputer levels. If we control that, we have the high 

ground for the standards space base that will make all the decisions in the coming decade, and I would not want to cede that to 

another country. I cannot trust the U.S. nuclear weapons technology to a system built in China, say. That is untenable. I would 

like to not consider that those low-power technologies are developed ahead of time in other countries that we will use embedded 

in our intelligence systems. To me, it is very important that the 

United States take a very strong leadership position in this technology arena. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. Dr. Reed? 

Dr. REED. Yes, if I might add to that. It is part of the reason in 

my testimony I spoke very specifically to the importance of U.S. industry engagement. And as we move into this increasingly mobile 

device, low-power world, which is one of the key enabling technologies for future exascale systems, it is really crucial that the 

U.S. vendors maintain the competitive edge and strike a balance, 

as we do in terms of investment, between the global market and 

maintaining the unique capabilities for U.S. national security. 

Now, that is part of the role of the Federal Government in terms 

of, as Ms. Crawford said in her testimony, about shaping the direction of industry to ensure that we have the technology capability 

that we need. 

And I would echo that there are other uses as well. As we have 

talked about the rise of data analytics and its importance for national security and signal intelligence and other domains, that is 

another area where we must think carefully about many of the enabling technologies of which hardware is one, but the algorithms 

and other pieces need careful scrutiny also. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. 

Dr. GILES. Yes, I would agree with what has been said. Just two 

points: I think it would be truly shameful for us to give up the elements of leadership that we have. And one of the things we pointed 

out and we asked in our exascale report was the criticality of time 

and of seizing the opportunity that in some way is presented 

uniquely to us to advance this field. But many, many countries will 

want to do that and we have a little bit of a time advantage because of our starting place. 

The other point, which is—it goes sort of in the direction of the 

open source software is the observation that a lot of the open 

science that is done in the world is done with international collaboration and with international connections. And we would, I think, 

like to still be in the position of having a lot of influence on the 

under-layer of that on which we will all build. But there certainly 
78 

is international collaboration in science and I wouldn’t want to 

minimize that—the importance of that for the open science community. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much. And I want to ask a question if the Chairman would give me just a few extra seconds here. 

I just want to also echo what I know some of my colleagues have 

stated. I know exascale computing is important but we have to 

make sure that we don’t pursue that at the expense of other important R&D activities that ASCR is doing. And I yield back. 

Mr. HULTGREN. The gentleman yields back. We will go through 

a second round of questioning if anyone would have other questions, so I will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. 

And I would address this first to Dr. Stevens but also ask if any 

of you would have other thoughts on this and really following up 

on Mr. Lipinski’s questions of timing and competitiveness. And I 

wondered, Dr. Stevens, if you would have some thought of what 

level of investment is needed for the United States to maintain 

global leadership in scientific and technical computing for the next 

decade? And then something specific of if we maintain current investment, at what point would China surpass us in computing capabilities? And then also just looking at dates, what type of approach and how much investment would be necessary for us to lead 

to a deployable system by 2020? 

Dr. STEVENS. Okay. So on the first one in terms of the resources 

required to do this, in the plans developed by the laboratories, we 

estimated that in addition to the current funding levels that we 

have, we would need an increment over time of approximately $400 

million a year. That would be split between the two partners, the 

Office of Science and the NNSA. At that funding level, we think it 

is feasible—not guaranteed but feasible—to deploy a system by 

2020. Of course, we made those estimates a few years ago when we 

had more runway than we have now. And that investment would 

go to both hardware and software and some applications of them— 

more applications would be needed by that time. 

At the current funding level, not including the bill—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. Right. 

Dr. STEVENS. —that is in front of us, it is estimated that we 

would not reach an exascale capability until middle of the next decade. We don’t have accurate estimates of precisely what China will 

do but my guess is they will probably exceed us by the end of the 

decade if we were in that scenario. I don’t remember your—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. I think that covered it. So really it is, you know, 

without the investment, it is going to be probably 2025 before we 

would reach that level? 

Dr. STEVENS. Absolutely. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Do you think with the investment, is it a possible—— 

Dr. STEVENS. We have—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. —expectation to reach exascale levels by 2020? 

Dr. STEVENS. I think it is possible. I think we would have to get 

moving faster than we are now and of course the industry is ready 

to do this. Labs are ready to do it; academia is ready to do it. We 

just need the resources and the commitment and also to do it in 

a way that doesn’t cannibalize the current program. We need the 
79 

base—we have to build on the base both in the Office of Science 

and in NNSA, and so this is really, really looking at incremental 

resources unfortunately to do it. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Okay. Thank you. Do any of the others have any 

thoughts or disagreement? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. I would just add that understanding what the 

sustained commitment is, whatever that dollar level turns out to 

be, is critical because then we can plan into the future. And not 

knowing whether, you know, the base budget is cut and the 

exascale R&D budget is cut and we have got a commitment to do 

this and then we are—now, we must do that because we have a 

contract and yet that prevents us from doing something else. So 

not knowing is really difficult to plan ahead and manage it effectively. So understanding that and sustaining that is very important. 

Mr. HULTGREN. I absolutely agree and it is one of the things I 

am passionate about. I know other Members of our Subcommittee 

and Committee are as well of bringing some certainty specifically 

to research and to science. When we are looking to advance these 

programs it is so important that we are not budgeting month-tomonth, which this place, Washington D.C., has kind of fallen into 

the habit of doing, but it has incredible detrimental impact, I know, 

on the great work that you all are doing. 

So I for one and I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 

would love to see some of that change. We are going to be fighting 

for that. 

Let me switch gears just a little bit and address this to Dr. Giles 

if I could and also to Dr. Stevens. But with respect to achieving an 

extraordinary number of computations per second, exascale appears to be a somewhat arbitrary goal. With current budgetary constraints, could DOE consider slower systems that would still be by 

far the fastest in the world or how do you see that fitting into this 

challenge of kind of keeping up with the rest of the world if DOE 

were to say, well, you know, we want to do some advancement but 

we are not going to go for that larger goal. We will just kind of settle for a lesser goal. How do you see that impacting the work that 

you are doing and the work that other nations are doing? 

Dr. GILES. Okay. Well, I think the key research to lower power 

consumption, to identify the pathway that takes us to exascale is 

one that is defined by that goal but which is a sort of—has a certain integrity of its own. Okay. If you do that—if one does that and 

makes that commitment to do their research and to do that beginning development, then how far you take it is part of the deployment question of how big a machine you build with the technology 

that you have done the research for. It—so—at least that is my 

take on it. I am not the technologist that Rick is and you may have 

a comment on that. 

Dr. STEVENS. Well, what I can say is that the laboratories are 

excellent stewards of the Nation’s money—— 

Dr. GILES. Yes. 

Dr. STEVENS. —and we will buy the most capable systems that 

we can afford to buy when we have to replace and when we can 

replace the current systems. So I think that the question of, you 

know, can we settle is really a question of do we want to settle for 
80 

not being able to do all the science or the most impactful engineering or address the most important national security challenges? We 

will do the best we can with what is provided to us. There is no 

question. I think lowering our sights though is not in our DNA. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Right. 

Dr. STEVENS. Right. 

Mr. HULTGREN. No, that is helpful. Thank you. My time is expired. I will recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Swalwell. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate your 

comments about providing more certainty to our national laboratories. And we know that it is not just the laboratories who need 

the certainty but also private industry or any contractors who depend on work from the laboratories. 

One of the first lessons I learned when I was a planning commissioner years ago on a local sign ordinance issue from a local small 

business owner was vote for me, vote against me, but just give me 

certainty and, you know, do not have, you know, month-to-month 

sign regulations that give us no certainty at all, which now I have 

learned here, as the Chair said, month-to-month budgets also don’t 

serve our laboratories well or private industry well. And so I join 

you in hoping that we can find ways to provide more certainty. 

I was hoping to just go witness by witness briefly and if you 

could just tell me for my own edification, and I am sure many others are curious, what are the private/public partnerships that you 

have at your laboratories through the exascale program? 

Dr. GILES. Well, let’s see. I don’t run a laboratory. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Sure. 

Dr. GILES. But I would note things like you do run a lab that 

does the INCITE program in ASCR that invites researchers from 

outside DOE and from industry and with the particular emphasis 

on some industries to use the most advanced facilities that we 

have, so I think that would be one that I would identify coming out 

of ASCR. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. And Dr. Stevens? 

Dr. STEVENS. Well, just a few that we have done in the recent 

past. We have got a collaboration with Pratt & Whitney developing 

more efficient turbine engines, with Procter & Gamble on a variety 

of improving consumer products, with Cummins in improving diesel engines, and Caterpillar improving their ability to model whole 

vehicles and including the transmission systems and so forth, with 

the Mayo Clinic in applying computations and larger-scale problems in metagenomics, and so on. There is a long list. Some of 

these are collaborations with end-user companies and some are collaborations with companies like IBM or with Intel and with Cray 

in developing next-generation technologies, and we also work with 

small businesses. 

So the laboratories have collaborations on both the end-user component of this technology and the company is developing the technology itself. 

Mr. SWALWELL. And when I hear some of those companies, IBM, 

Intel, Cummins, Caterpillar, I think of billions and billions and billions of dollars of exports. Those are some of the largest exporters 

in the United States, and if we are going to truly achieve our goal 

of doubling our exports over the next five years, making sure that 
81 

those companies can continue to play a part in reducing that trade 

deficit—we have about $40 billion every month—is crucial and it 

sounds like the laboratories are helping them to do that so they 

can sell their goods and services to the marketplace outside the 

United States. 

Dr. STEVENS. Absolutely. And we are also working with companies like Dow and DuPont and Johnson Controls. And it is a long 

list, right? And I think we exactly get this idea of helping American 

industry be more competitive. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. And Ms. Crawford? 

Ms. CRAWFORD. So rather than going through the long list, let 

me talk about the barriers for industrial adaptation of advanced 

computing. There have been a number of studies and there are 

three main barriers. One is the cost of establishing a supercomputing facility, the computer itself, the computing room, et cetera. 

The second one is the expertise, you know, having the skilled workforce that understands how to use these computers in a meaningful 

way for their products. And then the third is the software itself 

that helps them understand their products and how to improve 

those products. So the kind of partnerships that Dr. Stevens is 

talking about and that we have in our laboratory are helping to 

demonstrate to industry how to overcome those barriers so that 

they can in fact utilize this. And once they have firsthand demonstration and know the value, then they will start making the investments themselves at a higher level to drive their own productivity and competitiveness. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. And Dr. Reed, I mean also just like Dr. 

Giles I know you do not run a laboratory but any public/private 

partnerships you are familiar with that are working right now and 

also helping the innovation economy? 

Dr. REED. Certainly. And I have been in similar roles in the past. 

As I mentioned, I used to run an NSF supercomputer center and 

we did very similar things in Illinois when I was there. Advanced 

manufacturing was certainly a target, logistics and supply chain 

optimization. But in Iowa now, there are many issues around advanced biological modeling and how we think about the future of 

healthcare in terms of everything from modeling the characteristics 

of lungs and what the implications are for drug delivery, how we 

might work with companies about those issues. 

I would echo what Ms. Crawford said, though. What is really crucial in those engagements and use of high-performance computing 

is simplicity of use because the domain experts are interested in 

advancing either the technology or the science or its applications 

and less interested in understanding what those of us in the technology business might view as the really cool stuff. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Right. 

Dr. REED. It is a means to an end and so those software user 

interface issues are really important. 

When I was at Microsoft, I spent a great deal of time working 

with the community in science on exactly those issues. How do we 

bring the power of advanced computing into small companies and 

into individual’s hands where, from their perspective, the ease-ofuse that they find familiar in their mobile device or their PC ex-
82 

tends seamlessly and apparently magically to exploit those advanced capabilities? 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

This has been a great hearing. You know, I didn’t pay enough attention to this stuff when I was in high school. I am learning a 

heck of a lot now in Congress and I could sit here for another few 

hours but I know our witnesses and our panel have other places 

to be. But thank you again. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you. Thank you. And I do want to thank 

each one of you for being here today on a very busy day on Capitol 

Hill. And with that, I just want to thank you for your valuable testimony and I want to thank the Members for the questions that 

they have had. The Members of the Committee may have additional questions, especially with competing hearings that were 

going on at the same time, so we will ask if you would be willing 

to respond in writing to questions that we would submit. 

And with that thought, we will keep the record open for two 

weeks for additional comments and written questions from Members and request for your response to those. 

With that, I again want to thank you so much for your time and 

for your wisdom and information today. With that, the witnesses 

are excused and this hearing is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(83) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
84 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Roscoe Giles 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
91 

Responses by Dr. Rick Stevens 
92 
93 
94 
95 

Responses by Ms. Dona Crawford 
96 
97 
98 
99 
100 
101 
102 

Responses by Dr. Daniel Reed 
103 
104 

Æ