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1991-04-15
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STATEMENT OF SENATOR AL GORE
TUESDAY, MARCH 5 HEARING ON S. 272,
THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ACT OF 1991
Today, the Science Subcommittee is considering S. 272, the High-
Performance Computing Act. This bill will ensure that the United
States stays at the leading edge in computer technology. It would
roughly double the Federal government's investment in research and
development on new supercomputers, more advanced software, and
high-speed computer networks. Most importantly, it would create a
National Research and Education Network, the NREN, which would
connect more than one million people at more than a thousand
colleges, universities, laboratories, and hospitals throughout the
country, giving them access to computing power and information
resources unavailable anywhere today.
These technologies and this network represent our economic
future. They are the smokestack industries of today's Information
Age. We talk a lot now about jobs and economic development; about
pulling our country out of recession and into renewal. Our ability to
meet the economic challenges of the Information Age and beyond --
tough challenges from real competitors around the globe -- will rest
in large measure on our ability to maintain and strengthen an
already threatened lead in these technologies and industries.
I have been advocating legislation such as this for more than one
dozen years because I strongly believe that it is critical for our
country to develop the best scientists, the best science, the fastest,
most powerful computers, and then, to ensure access to these
technologies to as many people as possible so as many people as
possible will benefit from them. This legislation will help us do that.
Every year, there are new advocates. This year, finally, President
Bush is among them, including his budget for Fiscal Year 1992, $149
million in new funding to support these technologies.
We cannot afford to wait or, to put off this challenge. Not if we
care about jobs, economic development, or our ability to hold our
own in world markets.
During the last thirty years, computer technology has improved
exponentially, faster than technology in any other field. Computers
just keep getting faster, more powerful, and more inexpensive.
According to one expert, if automobile technology had improved as
much as computer technology has in recent years, a 1991 Cadillac
would now cruise at 20,000 miles per hour, get 5,000 miles to a
gallon, and cost only three cents!
As a result of these amazing advances, computers have gone
from being expensive, esoteric research tools isolated in the
laboratory to an integral part of our everyday life. We rely on
computers at the supermarket, at the bank, in the office, and in our
schools. They make our life easier in hundreds of ways.
Yet the computer revolution is not over. In fact, according to
some measures, the price-performance ratio of computers is
improving even faster now than it has in the past.
Anyone who has seen a supercomputer in action has a sense of
what computers could do in the future. Today, scientists and
engineers are using supercomputers to design better airplanes,
understand global warming, find oil fields, and discover safer, more
effective drugs. In many cases they can use these machines to mimic
experiments that would be too expensive or downright impossible in
real life. With a supercomputer model, engineers at Ford can
simulate auto crashes and test new safety features for a fraction of
the cost and in a fraction of the time it would take to really crash an
automobile. And they can observe many more variables, in much
more detail, than they could with a real test.
The bill we are considering today is very similar to the first title
of S. 1067, the High-Performance Computing Act of 1990, which
passed the Senate unanimously last October. Unfortunately, the
House was unable to act on the bill before we adjourned.
It is my hope that we will be able to move this bill quickly this
year. There is widespread support in both the House and the Senate.
In the House, Congressman George Brown, the new chairman of the
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has introduced a
very similar bill, H.R. 656, which has been cosponsored by
Congressmen Tim Valentine, Sherwood Boehlert, Norm Mineta, and
others. On Thursday, the Science Committee's Subcommittee on
Science and its Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness
will be holding a hearing on the bill. I look forward to working with
my House colleagues to move this bill as quickly as possible.
This legislation provides for a multi-agency high-performance
computing research and development program to be coordinated by
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP),
whose director, Dr. D. Allan Bromley, is our first witness today. The
primary agencies involved are the National Science Foundation (NSF),
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the
Department of Energy (DOE). Each of these agencies has experience
in developing and using high-performance computing technology.
S. 272 will provide for a well-planned, well-coordinated
research program which will effectively utilize the talents and
resources available throughout the Federal research agencies. In
addition to NSF, NASA, DOE, and DARPA, this program will involve
the Department of Commerce (in particular the National Institute of
Standards and Technology and NOAA), the Department of Health and
Human Services, the Department of Education, the United States
Geological Survey, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental
Protection Agency, and the Library of Congress, as well. The
technology developed under this program will find application
throughout the Federal government and throughout the country.
S. 272 will roughly double funding for high-performance
computing at NSF and NASA during the next five years. Additional
funding -- more than $1 billion during the next five years -- will also
be needed to expand research and development programs at DARPA
and DOE. Last year, I worked closely with Senators Johnston and
Domenici on the Energy Committee to pass legislation to authorize a
DOE High-Performance Computing Program, and I hope to work with
them and the other members of the Energy Committee to see that
program authorized and funded in fiscal year 1992. Already, Senator
Johnston and others have introduced S. 343, which would authorize
DOE's part of this multi-agency program.
To fund DOD's part of the program, last year I worked with
Senators Nunn and Bingaman and others on the Armed Services
Committee to authorize and appropriate an additional $20 million for
DARPA's high-performance computing program, money that has been
put to good use developing more powerful supercomputers and
faster computer networks. Advanced computer technology was a
key ingredient of the allies' success in the Persian Gulf War, but we
cannot simply rely on existing technology, we must make the
investment needed to stay at the leading edge. It is important to
remember the Patriot missile and the Tomahawk cruise missile rely
on computers based on technologies developed through Federal
computer research programs in the 1970's. The High-Performance
Computing Act will help ensure the technological lead in weaponry
that helped us win the war with Iraq and that will improve our
national security in the future.
This same technology is improving our economic security by
helping American scientists and engineers develop new products and
processes to keep the U.S. competitive in world markets.
Supercomputers can dramatically reduce the time it takes to design
and test a new product -- whether it is an airplane, a new drug, or an
aluminum can. More computing power means more energy-efficient,
cheaper products in all sectors of manufacturing. And that means
higher profits and more jobs for Americans.
Perhaps the most important contribution this bill will make to
our economic security is the National Research and Education
Network, the cornerstone of the program funded by this bill. By
1996, this fiber-optic computer network would connect more than
one million people at more than one thousand colleges and
universities in all fifty states, allowing them to send electronic mail,
share data, access supercomputers, use research facilities such as
radio telescopes, and log on to data bases containing trillions of bytes
of information on all sorts of topics. This network will speed
research and accelerate technology transfer, so that the discoveries
made in our university laboratories can be quickly and effectively
turned into profits for American companies.
Today, the National Science Foundation runs NSFNET, which
allows researchers and educators to exchange up to 1.5 million bits of
data (megabits) per second. The NREN will be at least a thousand
times faster, allowing researchers to transmit all the information in
the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from coast to coast in seconds.
With today's networks, it is easy to send documents and data, but
images and pictures require much faster speeds. They require the
NREN, which can carry gigabits, billions of bits, every second.
With access to computer graphics, researchers throughout the
country will be able to work together far more effectively than they
can today. It will be much easier for teams of researchers at colleges
throughout the country to work together. They will be able to see
the results of their experiments as the data comes in, they will be
able to share the results of their computer models in real-time, and
they will be able to brainstorm by teleconference. William Wulf,
formerly Assistance Director for Computer and Information Science
and Engineering at NSF, likes to talk about the "National
Collaboratory" -- a laboratory without walls which the NREN will
make possible. Researchers throughout the country, at colleges and
labs, large and small, will be able to stay on top of the latest
advances in their fields.
The NREN and the other technology funded by S. 272 will also
provide enormous benefits to American education, at all levels. By
most accounts, we are facing a critical shortage of scientific and
technical talent in the next ten years. By connecting high schools to
the NREN, students will be able to share ideas with other high school
students and with college students and professors throughout the
country. Already, some high school students are using the NSFNET to
access supercomputers, to send electronic mail, and to get data and
information that just is not available at their schools. In this way,
the network can nurture and inspire the next generation of scientists.
Today, most students using computer networks are studying
science and engineering, but there are more and more applications in
other fields, too. Economists, historians, and literature majors are all
discovering the power of networking. In the future, I think we will
see computers and networks used to teach every subject from
kindergarten through grad school. I was recently at MIT, where I
was briefed on Project Athena, a project to integrate computers and
networks into almost every course at MIT. Students use computers
to play with the laws of physics in computer models, to test airplane
designs in wind tunnel simulations, to improve their writing skills,
and to learn foreign languages. Many of the ideas being developed at
Project Athena and in hundreds of other experiments elsewhere
could one day help students and teachers throughout the country.
The library community has been at the forefront in using
computer and networking technology in education. For years, they
have had electronic card catalogues which allow students to track
down books in seconds. Now they are developing electronic text
systems which will store books in electronic form. When coupled to
a national network like the NREN, such a "Digital Library" could be
used by students and educators throughout the country, in
underfunded urban schools and in isolated rural school districts,
where good libraries are few and far between.
I recently spoke to the American Library Association annual
meeting in Chicago and heard many librarians describe how the
NREN could transform their lives. They are excited about the new
opportunities made possible by this technology.
The technology developed for the NREN will pave the way for
high-speed networks to our homes. It will give each and everyone of
us access to oceans of electronic information, let us use
teleconferencing to talk face-to-face to anyone anywhere, and
deliver advanced, digital programming even more sophisticated and
stunning than the HDTV available today. Other countries, Japan,
Germany, and others, are spending billions of install optical fiber to
the home, to take full advantage of this technology.
With this bill we can help shape the future -- shape it for the
better. This is an investment in our national security and our
economic security which we cannot afford not to make. For that
reason I was very glad to see the Administration propose a High-
Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program
very similar to the program outlined in S. 272. I intend to work
closely with Dr. Bromley and others within the Administration as
well as my colleagues in Congress to secure the funding needed to
implement this critically-important program.
I look forward to hearing the testimony of Dr. Bromley and all of
the distinguished witnesses who have made time in their very busy
schedule to be here today. And I look forward to working with my
colleagues on the Commerce Committee towards passage of this bill.