HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING MODERNIZATION PROGRAM

Abstract

This program element (PE) demonstrates and provides high performance computing hardware, parallel software, wide area networking services, and expertise that enable the Department of Defense (DoD) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) community to investigate and understand physical phenomena and behavior of systems through large scale computational simulation. DoD users of these services work in a diverse variety of science and technology areas including structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, material science, chemistry, biology, electromagnetics and acoustics, weather, ocean modeling, signal/image processing, forces modeling and simulation, environmental quality, electronics/networking/systems/C4I, and space and astrophysical sciences. The computational expertise and resources (massively parallel, networked, multi-core computers, advanced software applications and secure connectivity) provided by this Program enable DoD researchers and engineers to analyze complex problems and phenomena and develop novel solutions using state-of-the-art, physics-based and discrete event simulations. The combined capabilities of the HPC centers and the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) enable massive calculations to be completed more efficiently and at reduced cost than if each DoD research organization were to duplicate the necessary resources. For example, DoD personnel use High Performance Modernization Program (HPCMP) resources to do such things as improve the performance of manned and unmanned aircraft, validate design concepts and establish expected performance of new armor and penetrator designs, speed the development of new ship designs, and demonstrate the viability of weapons systems performance. The HPCMP supports the requirements of DoD scientists and engineers in three major areas of effort: DoD Supercomputing Resource Centers (DSRCs), the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN), and support for software applications. Dedicated HPC project investments (DHPIs) augment the DSRCs to form the total HPCMP computational capability. In 2011 the HPCMP provided approximately 1.4 billion processor hours to a user community representing requirements from all three services and the agencies of the DoD. The bulk of this capability is provided via 14 supercomputers (including systems for classified processing) located in the 5 DSRCs across the country providing a total of approximately 180,000 processors and 1.8 quadrillion floating point operations per second (1.8 petaFLOPS). DoD users store their results in 16 petabytes (16,000,000,000,000 bytes) of storage archival distributed across the centers and duplicated for backup (for a total storage capability of 32 petabytes). The DREN interconnects HPCMP resources and users nationwide via a research infrastructure that provides an aggregate network capacity of 25 billion bits per second to 36 user sites, 5 DSRCs, and 4 smaller affiliated resource centers (ARCs). Individual user site speeds range from 45 to 622 million bits per second, ARC speeds range from 155 to 2488 million bits per second, and DSRC speeds range from 622 to 3110 million bits per second. Mission-critical DoD applications across the spectrum of DoD activities are supported by the software component of the Program through training in advanced computational methods, the development of productive application development environments, tools, and methodologies, and through the direct provision of computational scientists and engineers to improve the performance, accuracy, and relevance of physics-based computational models. The cited work is consistent with the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering Science and Technology priority focus areas and the Army Modernization Strategy. The HPCMP transferred from the Office Secretary of Defense to the Department of the Army in FY12.

Document Details

• Document Type: R2 Budgetary Justification
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2013
• Source ID: 0603461A_3_2040_PB_2013
• Service Agency Name: Army

Entities

Organizations

• United States Army

Tags

Communities of Interest

• C4I
• Ground and Sea Platforms
• Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

• Acquisition
• Application Software
• Computational Science
• Computer Network Security
• Computer Networks
• Computer Science
• Computer Simulations
• Computers
• Department Of Defense
• Engineering
• Engineers
• Fluid Dynamics
• High Performance Computing
• Network Architecture
• Networks
• Simulations
• Test And Evaluation

Fields of Study

• Computer science

Readers

• Military Science and Technology Research and Modernization.
• Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Technology Areas

• Autonomy
• Microelectronics
• Space