Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/nren/hpca.1991/gore.txt

Text File | 1991-04-14 | 15KB | 246 lines

                                 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.