by B. L. Buzbee, N. Metropolis, and D. H. Sharp scientists two years to do may be reduced to needed for rapid progress. two months of effort. When this happens. Before presenting highlights of the con- practice in many fields of science and tech- ference we will review in more depth the nology will be revolutionized. importance of supercomputing and the These radical changes would also have a trends in computer performance that form needs. Electronic computers were developed, large and rapid impact on the nation’s econ- the background for the conference dis- in fact, during and after World War 11 to omy and security. The skill and effectiveness cussions. meet the need for numerical simulation in the with which supercomputers can be used to design of nuclear weapons, aircraft, and design new and more economical civilian The Importance of Supercomputers conventional ordnance. Today. the avail- aircraft will determine whether there is em.. ability of supercomputers ten thousand times ployrnent in Seattle or in a foreign city. The term “supercomputer” refers to the faster than the first electronic devices is Computer-aided design of automobiles is most powerful scientific computer available having a profound impact on all branches of already playing an important role in De- at a given time. The power of a computer is science and engineering—from astrophysics troit’s effort to recapture its position in the measured by its speed, storage capacity to elementary particle physics. from fusion automobile market. The speed and accuracy (memory). and precision. Today’s com- energy research to automobile design. The with which information can be processed will mercially available supercomputers, the reason is clear: supercomputers extend bear importantly on the effectiveness of our Cray I from Cray Research and the enormously the range of problems that are national intelligence activities. CYBER 205 from Control Data Corpora- effectively solvable. Japan and other foreign countries have tion, have a peak speed of over one hundred Although the last forty years have seen a already realized the significance of making million operations per second, a memory of dramatic increase in computer performance, this quantum jump in supercomputer devel- about four million 64-bit “words,” and a the number of users and the range of applica- opment, Japan is, in fact, actively engaged in precision of at least 64 bits. tions have been increasing at an even faster a highly integrated effort to realize it. At this There are presently about seventy-five of rate, to the point that demands for greater juncture the United States is in danger of these supercomputers in use throughout the performance now far outstrip the improve- losing its long-held leadership in supercom- world. They are being used at national ments in hardware. Moreover, the broadened puting. laboratories to solve complex scientific prob- community of users is also demanding im- Various efforts are being made in this lems in weapon design, energy research, provements in software that will permit a country to develop the hardware and soft- meteorology, oceanography, and geophysics. more comfortable interface between user and ware necessary for the change to massively In industry they are being used for design machine. parallel computer architecture. But these and simulation of very large-scale integrated Scientific supercomputing is now at a efforts are only loosely coordinated. circuits, design of aircraft and automobiles, critical juncture. While the demand for How can the United States maintain its and exploration for oil and minerals. To higher speed grows daily. computers as we worldwide supremacy in supercomputing? demonstrate why we need even greater have known them for the past twenty to What policies and strategies are needed to speed, we will examine some of these uses in thirty years are about as fast as we can make make the revolutionary step to massively more detail. them. The growing demand can only be met parallel supercomputers? How can individ- The first step in scientific research and by a radical change in computer architec- ual efforts in computer architecture. soft- engineering design is to model the phenom- ture. a change from a single serial processor ware. and languages be best coordinated for ena being studied. In most cases the whose logical design goes back to Turing this purpose? phenomena are complex and are modeled by and von Neumann to an aggregation of up to To discuss these questions. the Labora- equations that are nonlinear and singular a thousand parallel processors that can tory and the National Security Agency spore and. hence. refractory to analysis. Neverthe- perform many independent operations con- sored a conference in Los Alamos on August less. one must somehow discern what the currently. This radical change in hardware 15-19, 1983. Entitled “Frontiers of Super- model predicts. test whether the predictions will necessitate improvements in program- computing." the conference brought together are correct, and then (invariably) improve ming languages and software. If made, they leading representatives from industry, gov- the model, Each of these steps is difficult, could significantly reduce the time needed to ernment, and universities who shared the time-consuming, and expensive. Supercom- translate difficult problems into machine- most recent technical developments as well puters play an important role in each step. computable form. What now takes a team of as their individual perspectives on the tactics helping to make practical what would other- LOS ALAMOS SCIENCE Fall 1983 65 wise be impractical. The demand for im- oceans or the atmosphere or the motion of or decades to complete. Here numerical proved performance of supercomputers tectonic plates cannot be tested in the labora- simulation can provide an accelerated pic- stems from our constant desire to bring new tory, but can be simulated on a large com- ture that may help, for example, in assessing problems over the threshold of practicality. puter. Many phenomena are difficult to the long-term effects of increasing the per- As an example of the need for supercom- investigate experimentally in a way that will centage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. puters in modeling complex phenomena, not modify the behavior being studied. An consider magnetic fusion research. Magnetic example is the flow of reactants and Trends in Performance and fusion requires heating and compressing a products within an internal combustion en- Architecture magnetically confined plasma to the ex- gine. Supercomputers are currently being tremes of temperature and density at which used to study this problem. Most scientists engaged in solving the thermonuclear fusion will occur. During this Testing a nuclear weapon at the Nevada complex problems outlined above feel that process unstable motions of the plasma may test site costs several million dollars. Run- an increase of speed of at least two orders of occur that make it impossible to attain the ning a modern wind tunnel to test airfoil magnitude is required to make significant required final conditions. In addition, state designs costs 150 million dollars a year. progress. The accompanying figure shows variables in the plasma may change by many Supercomputers can explore a much larger that the increase in speed, while very rapid at orders of magnitude. Analysis of this process range of designs than can actually be tested, the start, now appears to be leveling off. is possible only by means of large-scale and expensive test facilities can be reserved numerical computations, and scientists work- for the most promising designs. ing on the problem report the need for Supercomputers are needed to interpret computers one hundred times faster and with test results. For example, in nuclear weapons larger memories than those now available. tests many of the crucial physical parameters Another example concerns computing the are not accessible to direct observation, and equation of state of a classical one-compo- the measured signals are only indirectly nent plasma. A one-component plasma is an related to the underlying physical processes. idealized system of one ionic species im- D. Henderson of Los Alamos characterized mersed in a uniform sea of electrons such the situation well: “The crucial linkage be- that the whole system is electrically neutral. tween these signals, the physical processes, If the equation of state of this “simple” and the device design parameters is available material could be computed, it would only through simulation." provide a framework from which to study Finally, supercomputers permit scientists the equations of state of more complicated and engineers to circumvent some real-world substances. Before the advent of the Cray-1, constraints. In some cases environmental the equation of state of a one-component considerations impose constraints. Clearly, Year plasma could not be computed throughout the safety of nuclear reactors is not well the parameter range of interest. suited to experimental study. But with Using the Cray-1, scientists developed a powerful computers and reliable models, better, more complex approximation to the scientists can simulate reactor accidents, The rapid growth has been due primarily interparticle potential. Improved software either minor or catastrophic, without en- to advances in microelectronics. First came and very efficient algorithms made it possible dangering the environment. the switch from cumbersome and capricious for the Cray-1 to execute the new calculation Time can also impose severe constraints vacuum tubes to small and reliable semicon- at about 90 million operations per second. on the scientist. Consider, for example, ductor transistors. Then in 1958 Jack Kilby Even so, it took some seven hours; but, for chemical reactions that take place within invented a method for fabricating many the first time, the equation of state for a one- microseconds. One of the advantages of transistors on a single silicon chip a fraction component plasma was calculated through- large-scale numerical simulation is that the of an inch on a side, the so-called integrated out the interesting range.