Every six months, the folks at Top500.org put together what has become the most-recognized metric of supercomputing speed and power, the Top 500 list. While there’s ongoing debate about the meaning and value of a top 500 ranking, it’s proven to be the most often-cited guide to where the “big iron” really is — touted by vendors, researchers, agencies, even policymakers as a way to demonstrate their high-performance computing capabilities.
The newest ranking, released at this week’s SC07 conference in Reno, Nevada, struck me as noteworthy because of the sites ranked in the Top 5. In the last ranking back in June 2007, the top 5 sites were all in the U.S. — 4 DOE Labs and IBM’s Watson Research Center. In the latest ranking, only two U.S. sites rank in the top 5 — DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab (it’s BlueGene/L machine is #1) and the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (an SGI machine at #3). The other three are Germany’s Foshungszentrum Juelich (another BlueGene machine at #2), India’s Computational Research Laboratories (an HP cluster at #4), and a classified machine at a Swedish government agency (another HP cluster at #5).
I don’t want to draw any huge conclusions from this about the state of U.S. HPC efforts — after all, all the machines in the top 5 (indeed in the Top 15) are manufactured by U.S.-based companies (though the Indian machine apparently makes use of their own “innovative routing technology”). But if nothing else, this appears to demonstrate a commitment by these other countries — all competitors in the global economy — to really strong investments in HPC technologies. It represents further capacity-building on their part, the recognition that in order to compete, they must compute (to steal a catchphrase from the Council on Competitiveness).
As we look for ways to benchmark U.S. competitiveness and judge where future trends will take us, taking note of our competitors investments in high-performance computing ought to factor in pretty heavily, I think. That said, the U.S. continues to do pretty well in investing in HPC.
Last July, or maybe even a bit earlier, the members of the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — an organization of high-tech companies and academic societies (CRA is a member) devoted to increasing federal support for basic research in the physical sciences, mathematics, computing and engineering — looked ahead at the calendar and realized that in a few short months the anniversary of one of the most significant events in world history would be upon them. The launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 changed the landscape for science and engineering in the U.S. by forcing a focus on improvements to our science and engineering to “close the gap” with the Soviets (whether there really was a gap at the time…a subject for someone else’s post). Sputnik led to a significant investment in space-related research and engineering, of course, but it also — and maybe more importantly — led to a overall buttressing of the science and engineering ecosystem in the United States. The payoff of that support over the last 50 years has been the United States’ leadership position in the global economy, the high standard of living for our citizens, and the dominance of our military. Given the focus of the Task Force, it seemed appropriate to find ways to commemorate the anniversary and the launch’s impact.
One of the ideas tossed around was that the Task Force should get a little Web 2.0-ish and sponsor a video contest on YouTube: create a 3-minute video showcasing how federally funded research has changed American life. The winner would get $1,000, plus an all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC, to watch as their video was played a Capitol Hill event.
Now, I like to think that I’m a pretty web-savvy guy — I twitter; I’ve got a TumbleLog — but I wasn’t at all convinced that this contest would amount to much at all. I could only imagine the sort of the entries that this contest, once unleashed on the YouTube community, might inspire. I was less convinced after my colleagues on the Task Force created the video announcing the contest. I respect the Task Force members as ardent and effective advocates for science, but, uh, videographers we’re not. And the first entry to the contest didn’t give me much hope.
But we let the contest play out and, remarkably, some good stuff started coming in. A few teams really took some time to <a href=come upwithinterestingapproaches. And the eventual contest winner’s was just outstanding:
(The director/creator of the video is Adan Vielma, a Junior at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He says he spent only 14 hours creating the images and putting it all together.)
Vielma attended a screening of his video at a November 8th briefing of the Congressional R&D Caucus, hosted by Representatives Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Judy Biggert (R-IL), as part of an event called “Sputnik in a YouTube Age.” The event, sponsored by the Task Force, featured remarks by two former NASA astronauts — Mae Jameison, the first African-American woman in space, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first U.S. woman to spacewalk — focusing on how Sputnik marked the beginning of an investment in science and math that led to the greatest explosion of scientific advancement the world had ever seen. The event, held on an otherwise busy Thursday, was absolutely packed, and I have to think a large part of the draw was the novelty of seeing the YouTube submissions.
So maybe we’ll have to explore other Web 2.0-ish ways of making our case…. A Googlemap mashup of innovation? Best innovation-oriented Facebook App? We’ll see.
On December 3, I will embark on the next installment of my own future, which will place me in the center of the ever-evolving computing revolution. On that day, I will be joining Microsoft to head a new research initiative (see the Microsoft Research press release and RENCI/UNC press release) in scalable and multicore computing. I am enormously excited, as these are among the most interesting technical problems in computing, and they are my long-time professional interests. I will be working with Microsoft researchers and product developers, as well as industry partners and academics. It doesnt get any cooler than this.
Check the post for a bunch more detail on the move. Congrats, Dan!
November 5, 2007 Zegura to Chair GENI Science Council
Ellen Zegura, Professor and Chair of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named Chair of the GENI Science Council (GSC).
The GSC was established by the Computing Community Consortium in February 2007 to articulate a visionary and compelling research agenda in networking and related fields, with a particular focus on topics that might require substantial shared research instrumentation such as has been envisioned as GENI, the Global Environment for Network Innovations.
Previously, Zegura co-chaired the GSC with Scott Shenker from UC Berkeley. For personal reasons, Shenker is stepping down as Co-chair, but he will remain a member of the GSC.
The Computing Community Consortium congratulates Ellen, and thanks both Ellen and Scott for their contributions — past and future! — to the GSC.
Further information on the GENI Science Council.
Further information on the Computing Community Consortium.
Update: Zegura has also written a handy guide (pdf) to GENI that helps lay out the case for the project. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in learning what GENI proposes to accomplish.
Questions about NSF’s new $52 million Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative? The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a “Brown Bag” discussion on the topic with CDI program director Sirin Tekinay on Thursday, November 8th, at noon ET. You can submit your questions now and Sirin will join the discussion on Thursday with answers.
As we’ve mentioned previously, the CDI initiative is a cross-Foundation initiative aimed at “[broadening] the Nation’s capability for innovation by developing a new generation of computationally based discovery concepts and tools to deal with complex, data-rich and interacting systems.” The $52 million initiative* will be led by CISE (which will control about $20 million), with participation from Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Science, Social, Behavioral and Economic science, Cyberinfrastructure, International Science, and EHR. NSF hopes to grow the program in successive budget years up to $250 million in 2012, with CISE controlling a proportional share. So this is potentially a very big deal.
Tune in to the chat on Thursday and learn more!
* NSF requested $52 million for the program in FY 08, and Congressional appropriators have included full funding for the program in their as-yet-unpassed appropriations bills. However, the Chronicle describes CDI as a $26 million program and I’m not sure where that number came from. In any case, the final total for FY 08 won’t be known until Congress and the President sort out the mess that FY 08 appropriations hasbecome….
A current and several former CRA Board members have been elected as Fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Section on Information, Computing, and Communication this month. A ceremony honoring them will be held in February 2008 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. Fellows are elected by their peers for their contributions to science and technology. A full list of the Fellows can be found here.
Current CRA Board member Andrew A. Chien, vice president of Intelís Corporate Technology Group and director of Intel research, is also a fellow of the ACM and the IEEE. He was formerly a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Former Board members, John L. King, David A. Patterson, and Stuart Feldman, were also elected AAAS Fellows. John is the Vice Provost for Academic Information and a professor at the University of Michigan as well as a fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He is formerly a Fulbright Distinguished Chair. Dave is the E.H. and M.E. Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE. He also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Stu is currently the Vice President, Engineering, East Coast at Google, a position he took recently after his time as Vice President of Computer Science at IBM Research. He is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE and is currently the president of ACM.
Congratulations Andrew, John, Dave, and Stu! AAAS Section on Information, Computing, and Communication Fellows
Werner Braun, University of Texas Medical Branch ï C. Sidney Burrus, Rice University ï Jin-Yi Cai, University of Wisconsin-Madison ï Andrew A. Chien, Intel Corporation ï Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University ï Stuart I. Feldman, IBM Corporation ï Jean-Luc Gaudiot, University of California, Irvine ï Michael T. Goodrich, University of California, Irvine ï David Harel, Weizmann Institute of Science ï John L. King, University of Michigan ï David J. Lilja, University of Minnesota ï Maja J. Mataric¥, University of Southern California ï David A. Patterson, University of California, Berkeley ï David M. Rocke, University of California, Davis ï John R. Rumble, Information International Associates ï David E. Shaw, D. E. Shaw and Co., Inc. ï James J. Thomas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ï Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences ï Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University
Two recent Information Week articles are of interest. The first article discusses the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technologys newly released report regarding the IT workforce and the need to increase the representation of women and minorities to keep America competitive. This was a theme at the recent conferences in Florida, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Information Technology. The report is free and available at the CPST web site but you do have to register to access it.
The second article is about the National Research Council report encouraging open exchange of science and technology research on the international stage. The article states the Councils understanding that there are matters of national security that the United States is trying to protect by classifying research but that the possibility that the United States might lose its edge in technology and research represents one of the greatest risks to national security. Again the report is available online and is worth reading.
Coverage from the Tapia Conference (previous post)…
Former CRA board member John King kicked off the second day of the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing with a diversity focused plenary emphasizing the evolution of cultural context. Using historical examples Dr. King focused on the changes of the last 200 years in the US that show the progression of society in accepting and celebrating the differences between the majority and the minority groups. He emphasized that the context changes the point of view and different points of view provide more information. That is why diversity is so important.
This echoes strongly the plenary given yesterday afternoon by Norman Johnson of Referentia Systems. His talk discussed the importance of mass knowledge and that the knowledge of large groups is often more accurate than the knowledge of issue area experts. Without diversity, that mass knowledge is, in effect, “dumbed-down.”
A panel discussing why computing departments fail to retain underrepresented students if universities care about diversity noted the need for role models and emphasis on getting underrepresented students through the first year by building community and accepting cultural differences.
More to come…
The government affairs team here at CRA is headed to Orlando next week! I will be bringing you updates from the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference and Peter will let you know whats happening at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. The conferences are co-located this year, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects the overall dynamic of both conferences. I’m guessing it’ll be a big positive, but we’ll see. Stayed tuned!
October 11, 2007 Four Added to GENI Science Council
The Computing Community Consortium is pleased to announce the addition of four members to the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). The new members will join 15 current members of the council in providing scientific guidance for the GENI project — a proposed experimental facility to allow research on a wide variety of problems in communications, networking, and distributed systems.
The new members will expand the breadth of research expertise on the GENI Science Council, said Edward Lazowska, Chair of the CCC Council.
The new members:
Joan Feigenbaum, Henry Ford II Professor of Computer Science at Yale University
James A. Hendler, Tetherless World Senior Constellation Chair at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Michael Kearns, National Center Chair in Resource Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylavnia
Larry Peterson, Chair of Computer Science at Princeton University.
The GENI Science Council was originally established in March 2007 by the CCC, in partnership with the National Science Foundation. The Science Council will produce a comprehensive research plan that describes the scientific and engineering research questions that GENI will make possible to address, the educational opportunities that GENI will afford, and the industrial collaborations the GENI will invite. Members of the GENI Science Council were selected from a pool of more than 100 individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
Further information on the GENI program, including the composition of the Science Council, can be found on the web at http://geni.net.
About CCC: Formed in partnership with the National Science Foundation and the Computing Research Association, the Computing Community Consortium seeks to catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. On the web: https://cra.org/ccc
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Top of the Top500 List More International
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaEvery six months, the folks at Top500.org put together what has become the most-recognized metric of supercomputing speed and power, the Top 500 list. While there’s ongoing debate about the meaning and value of a top 500 ranking, it’s proven to be the most often-cited guide to where the “big iron” really is — touted by vendors, researchers, agencies, even policymakers as a way to demonstrate their high-performance computing capabilities.
The newest ranking, released at this week’s SC07 conference in Reno, Nevada, struck me as noteworthy because of the sites ranked in the Top 5. In the last ranking back in June 2007, the top 5 sites were all in the U.S. — 4 DOE Labs and IBM’s Watson Research Center. In the latest ranking, only two U.S. sites rank in the top 5 — DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab (it’s BlueGene/L machine is #1) and the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (an SGI machine at #3). The other three are Germany’s Foshungszentrum Juelich (another BlueGene machine at #2), India’s Computational Research Laboratories (an HP cluster at #4), and a classified machine at a Swedish government agency (another HP cluster at #5).
I don’t want to draw any huge conclusions from this about the state of U.S. HPC efforts — after all, all the machines in the top 5 (indeed in the Top 15) are manufactured by U.S.-based companies (though the Indian machine apparently makes use of their own “innovative routing technology”). But if nothing else, this appears to demonstrate a commitment by these other countries — all competitors in the global economy — to really strong investments in HPC technologies. It represents further capacity-building on their part, the recognition that in order to compete, they must compute (to steal a catchphrase from the Council on Competitiveness).
As we look for ways to benchmark U.S. competitiveness and judge where future trends will take us, taking note of our competitors investments in high-performance computing ought to factor in pretty heavily, I think. That said, the U.S. continues to do pretty well in investing in HPC.
Innovation Task Force Video Contest
/In: Events /by Peter HarshaLast July, or maybe even a bit earlier, the members of the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — an organization of high-tech companies and academic societies (CRA is a member) devoted to increasing federal support for basic research in the physical sciences, mathematics, computing and engineering — looked ahead at the calendar and realized that in a few short months the anniversary of one of the most significant events in world history would be upon them. The launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 changed the landscape for science and engineering in the U.S. by forcing a focus on improvements to our science and engineering to “close the gap” with the Soviets (whether there really was a gap at the time…a subject for someone else’s post). Sputnik led to a significant investment in space-related research and engineering, of course, but it also — and maybe more importantly — led to a overall buttressing of the science and engineering ecosystem in the United States. The payoff of that support over the last 50 years has been the United States’ leadership position in the global economy, the high standard of living for our citizens, and the dominance of our military. Given the focus of the Task Force, it seemed appropriate to find ways to commemorate the anniversary and the launch’s impact.
One of the ideas tossed around was that the Task Force should get a little Web 2.0-ish and sponsor a video contest on YouTube: create a 3-minute video showcasing how federally funded research has changed American life. The winner would get $1,000, plus an all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC, to watch as their video was played a Capitol Hill event.
Now, I like to think that I’m a pretty web-savvy guy — I twitter; I’ve got a TumbleLog — but I wasn’t at all convinced that this contest would amount to much at all. I could only imagine the sort of the entries that this contest, once unleashed on the YouTube community, might inspire. I was less convinced after my colleagues on the Task Force created the video announcing the contest. I respect the Task Force members as ardent and effective advocates for science, but, uh, videographers we’re not. And the first entry to the contest didn’t give me much hope.
But we let the contest play out and, remarkably, some good stuff started coming in. A few teams really took some time to <a href=come up with interesting approaches. And the eventual contest winner’s was just outstanding:
(The director/creator of the video is Adan Vielma, a Junior at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He says he spent only 14 hours creating the images and putting it all together.)
Vielma attended a screening of his video at a November 8th briefing of the Congressional R&D Caucus, hosted by Representatives Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Judy Biggert (R-IL), as part of an event called “Sputnik in a YouTube Age.” The event, sponsored by the Task Force, featured remarks by two former NASA astronauts — Mae Jameison, the first African-American woman in space, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first U.S. woman to spacewalk — focusing on how Sputnik marked the beginning of an investment in science and math that led to the greatest explosion of scientific advancement the world had ever seen. The event, held on an otherwise busy Thursday, was absolutely packed, and I have to think a large part of the draw was the novelty of seeing the YouTube submissions.
So maybe we’ll have to explore other Web 2.0-ish ways of making our case…. A Googlemap mashup of innovation? Best innovation-oriented Facebook App? We’ll see.
Dan Reed Heads to Microsoft Research
/In: CRA, People /by Peter Harsha“Veteran supercomputing researcher” and current CRA Board Chair Dan Reed, will leave his position at the University of North Carolina’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and join Microsoft Research on December 3rd, he announced today. From his blog post:
Check the post for a bunch more detail on the move. Congrats, Dan!
Zegura to Chair GENI Science Council
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaAn announcement from the Computing Community Consortium:
Update: Zegura has also written a handy guide (pdf) to GENI that helps lay out the case for the project. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in learning what GENI proposes to accomplish.
The Chronicle on Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation
/In: Funding, FY08 Appropriations, R&D in the Press, Research /by Peter HarshaQuestions about NSF’s new $52 million Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative? The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a “Brown Bag” discussion on the topic with CDI program director Sirin Tekinay on Thursday, November 8th, at noon ET. You can submit your questions now and Sirin will join the discussion on Thursday with answers.
As we’ve mentioned previously, the CDI initiative is a cross-Foundation initiative aimed at “[broadening] the Nation’s capability for innovation by developing a new generation of computationally based discovery concepts and tools to deal with complex, data-rich and interacting systems.” The $52 million initiative* will be led by CISE (which will control about $20 million), with participation from Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Science, Social, Behavioral and Economic science, Cyberinfrastructure, International Science, and EHR. NSF hopes to grow the program in successive budget years up to $250 million in 2012, with CISE controlling a proportional share. So this is potentially a very big deal.
Tune in to the chat on Thursday and learn more!
* NSF requested $52 million for the program in FY 08, and Congressional appropriators have included full funding for the program in their as-yet-unpassed appropriations bills. However, the Chronicle describes CDI as a $26 million program and I’m not sure where that number came from. In any case, the final total for FY 08 won’t be known until Congress and the President sort out the mess that FY 08 appropriations has become….
CRA Board Members Elected AAAS Fellows
/In: CRA, People /by MelissaNorrA current and several former CRA Board members have been elected as Fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Section on Information, Computing, and Communication this month. A ceremony honoring them will be held in February 2008 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. Fellows are elected by their peers for their contributions to science and technology. A full list of the Fellows can be found here.
Current CRA Board member Andrew A. Chien, vice president of Intelís Corporate Technology Group and director of Intel research, is also a fellow of the ACM and the IEEE. He was formerly a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Former Board members, John L. King, David A. Patterson, and Stuart Feldman, were also elected AAAS Fellows. John is the Vice Provost for Academic Information and a professor at the University of Michigan as well as a fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He is formerly a Fulbright Distinguished Chair. Dave is the E.H. and M.E. Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE. He also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Stu is currently the Vice President, Engineering, East Coast at Google, a position he took recently after his time as Vice President of Computer Science at IBM Research. He is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE and is currently the president of ACM.
Congratulations Andrew, John, Dave, and Stu!
AAAS Section on Information, Computing, and Communication Fellows
Werner Braun, University of Texas Medical Branch ï C. Sidney Burrus, Rice University ï Jin-Yi Cai, University of Wisconsin-Madison ï Andrew A. Chien, Intel Corporation ï Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University ï Stuart I. Feldman, IBM Corporation ï Jean-Luc Gaudiot, University of California, Irvine ï Michael T. Goodrich, University of California, Irvine ï David Harel, Weizmann Institute of Science ï John L. King, University of Michigan ï David J. Lilja, University of Minnesota ï Maja J. Mataric¥, University of Southern California ï David A. Patterson, University of California, Berkeley ï David M. Rocke, University of California, Davis ï John R. Rumble, Information International Associates ï David E. Shaw, D. E. Shaw and Co., Inc. ï James J. Thomas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ï Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences ï Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University
Two Information Week Articles of Interest
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy, R&D in the Press, Security /by MelissaNorrTwo recent Information Week articles are of interest. The first article discusses the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technologys newly released report regarding the IT workforce and the need to increase the representation of women and minorities to keep America competitive. This was a theme at the recent conferences in Florida, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Information Technology. The report is free and available at the CPST web site but you do have to register to access it.
The second article is about the National Research Council report encouraging open exchange of science and technology research on the international stage. The article states the Councils understanding that there are matters of national security that the United States is trying to protect by classifying research but that the possibility that the United States might lose its edge in technology and research represents one of the greatest risks to national security. Again the report is available online and is worth reading.
Tapia Conference Coverage
/In: Diversity in Computing, Events, People /by MelissaNorrCoverage from the Tapia Conference (previous post)…
Former CRA board member John King kicked off the second day of the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing with a diversity focused plenary emphasizing the evolution of cultural context. Using historical examples Dr. King focused on the changes of the last 200 years in the US that show the progression of society in accepting and celebrating the differences between the majority and the minority groups. He emphasized that the context changes the point of view and different points of view provide more information. That is why diversity is so important.
This echoes strongly the plenary given yesterday afternoon by Norman Johnson of Referentia Systems. His talk discussed the importance of mass knowledge and that the knowledge of large groups is often more accurate than the knowledge of issue area experts. Without diversity, that mass knowledge is, in effect, “dumbed-down.”
A panel discussing why computing departments fail to retain underrepresented students if universities care about diversity noted the need for role models and emphasis on getting underrepresented students through the first year by building community and accepting cultural differences.
More to come…
Tapia and Hopper Conferences
/In: Diversity in Computing, Events /by MelissaNorrThe government affairs team here at CRA is headed to Orlando next week! I will be bringing you updates from the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference and Peter will let you know whats happening at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. The conferences are co-located this year, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects the overall dynamic of both conferences. I’m guessing it’ll be a big positive, but we’ll see. Stayed tuned!
Four Added to GENI Science Council
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaAn announcement from your friends at the Computing Community Consortium: