High Performance Computing

Advanced Research Projects Agency Should Do More to Foster Program Goals Gao ID: IMTEC-93-24 May 17, 1993

The Advanced Research Projects Agency's goal of achieving a thousand-fold increase in useful computing power by 1996 will likely not be met without greater emphasis on the development of system software. High performance computing refers to the use of advanced computing technologies, especially supercomputers, to quickly solve very complex, numerically intensive problems. Topics being studied range from global climate change to molecular structure. The Advanced Research Projects Agency has the largest budget--$275 million in fiscal year 1993--of any single agency participating in the $800-million federal initiative to accelerate the introduction of high performance computers and networks. This report examines (1) the agency's distribution of advanced computers to research sites, (2) interaction with the research community, and (3) the balance between hardware and software investments in the program.

GAO found that: (1) although ARPA actively involves itself with the research community by providing researchers with quick access to early prototypes of massively parallel processing machines (MPP), ARPA placement of the computers at research sites has been unjustifiably biased toward two contractors; (2) HPC technological progress has been slow due to limited ARPA interaction with the research community; (3) ARPA does not provide adequate research guidance or contractor selection information, has not set research goals, does not publish detailed summaries or progress reports, and fails to provide researchers with performance data; (4) the ARPA goal of increasing computing power by 1996 is in jeopardy, since HPC software development has not kept pace with hardware development; and (5) ARPA needs to increase its focus on HPC system software development.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.