1 - Introduction – The Nature of High-Performance Computation

Summary

The need for speed. Since the beginning of the era of the modern digital computer in the early 1940s, computing power has increased at an exponential rate (see Fig. 1). Such an exponential growth is predicted by the well-known “Moore's Law,” first advanced in 1965 by Gordon Moore of Intel, asserting that the number of transistors per inch on integrated circuits will double every 18 months. Clearly there has been a great need for ever more computation. This need continues today unabated. The calculations performed by those original computers were in the fields of ballistics, nuclear fission, and cryptography. And, today these fields, in the form of computational fluid dynamics, advanced simulation for nuclear testing, and cryptography, are among computing's Grand Challenges.

In 1991, the U.S. Congress passed the High Performance Computing Act, which authorized The Federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program. A class of problems developed in conjunction with the HPCC Program was designated “Grand Challenge Problems” by Dr. Ken Wilson of Cornell University. These problems were characterized as “fundamental problems in science and engineering that have broad economic or scientific impact and whose solution can be advanced by applying high performance computing techniques and resources.” Since then various scientific and engineering committees and governmental agencies have added problems to the original list. As a result, today there are many Grand Challenge problems in engineering, mathematics, and all the fundamental sciences. The ambitious goals of recent Grand Challenge efforts strive to

• build more energy-efficient cars and airplanes,

• design better drugs,

• forecast weather and predict global climate change,

• improve environmental modeling,

• […]