The Resource. Spring 2000

Abstract

As we develop this newsletter during the millennium "mania," we naturally reflect on as well as forecast the industry. The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC) recently decommissioned the first supercomputer purchased as part of the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), the Cray C90. At the same time, it is installing one of the largest and newest scalable parallel systems in the world--the IBM Power3, 8-way SMP. The HPCMP has truly modernized the computing capability for the Department of Defense (DoD) researcher. However, we must continue to stay on the leading edge by forecasting and preparing for the next generation of high performance computing (HPC) architectures. We must continue to work toward meeting all of our user-specified requirements. SC99 revealed that clusters of computers are starting to show their strength in the industry; Java may actually become a programming language that will give Fortran and C a run for their money; and long-haul networks are now truly capable of supporting distributed-computing applications. These trends share one common characteristic that foretells the next supercomputing generation--the business of supercomputing is going to be geographically distributed. The biggest challenge associated with distributed-computing environments is "interfacing." We in the computer industry typically think of interfacing as a technical challenge. How often have you heard the term "the standard interface?" If we ever thought technical standards were difficult to establish, imagine interfacing multiple organizations, a fundamental requirement for the success of distributed-computing environments. High levels of data integrity, security requirements, multidiscipline projects, and growing HPC requirements all demand that the supercomputing, research-and- development, and test-and-evaluation communities interface at a level never before experienced.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA526874

Entities

Organizations

  • Engineer Research and Development Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • C Programming Language
  • Central Processing Units
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Electronic Mail
  • Fluid Flow
  • Graphical User Interface
  • High Performance Computing
  • Information Systems
  • Jet Propulsion
  • Operating Systems
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Economics
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.