Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the subject of the High Performance Computing and Communications program.

My name is Ed Lazowska. I head the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. I was a member of the recent National Research Council committee to examine the status of the HPCC Initiative, about which Ivan Sutherland has testified. I also serve on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association. Today I'm here to represent the members of the Computing Research Association: nearly 200 industrial research laboratories and academic programs in computer science and computer engineering, where the nation's cutting-edge research and graduate education in these fields takes place.

The Computing Research Association strongly endorses the key findings of the NRC study which were discussed by Ivan Sutherland in his testimony. To recap:

• There has been mind-boggling progress in information technology, which pervades most aspects of our lives and most aspects of our economy.
• The nation that leads in information technology enjoys enormous competitive advantages.
• America owns this leadership today, thanks to a complex interplay between government, academia, and industry. The record is crystal clear.
• The government's role also is crystal clear. Industry can afford to look ahead only a few years, but as a nation, we can and must invest for the long term. By-and-large, this work takes place in universities, with government support.
• The HPCC program is a major success:
  • The emphasis on "high performance" is appropriate: cutting-edge information technology is a window on the future -- a "time machine."
  • The emphasis on parallel computing is a success: while there is much more to be done, its viability is clear, and many important problems in all areas of science and engineering have been tackled.
  • The inter-agency coordination and cooperation is working extremely well.

1. The HPCC program is the nation's research and education program in information technology

HPCC is much more than the supercomputer centers -- although the supercomputer centers are multi-dimensional and make a wide variety of contributions to science and engineering -- from astrophysics to zoology, and including computer science and engineering.

HPCC is much more than the highest performance systems -- although the highest performance systems are indeed time machines offering a window onto the future, and although the path from cutting edge to desktop is direct and rapid.

HPCC is systems, software, networking, human resources, and the technology and applications for the nation's information infrastructure.

Information technology is our nation's future. The HPCC program is our nation's research and education program in information technology.

2. HPCC's inter-agency coordination has been a model success

• the supercomputer centers
• the gigabit testbeds
• the digital library initiative
• the Strategic Implementation Plan of the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Information and Communications

3. The HPCC program has proven to be appropriately flexible and adaptable

So it is with HPCC, as we explore America's technological frontier. The name has stayed the same, but the program has evolved and adapted:

• the focus on software has increased dramatically
• the focus on communications has increased dramatically
• the entire Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications component was added to the program, with its increased emphasis on research issues related to "horizontal scale" (that is, ubiquity) in addition to "vertical scale" (performance)

4. A strategic plan for the future exists

• global-scale information infrastructure technologies
• high performance / scalable systems
• high confidence systems
• virtual environments
• user-centered interfaces and tools
• human resources and education

The Computing Research Association strongly endorses the CIC Strategic Planning effort and the directions that it has identified.

5. The role of universities and the federal government is critical

I serve on the 6-person Technical Advisory Board for Microsoft. Over the past five years, Microsoft discovered that in order to create new markets it needed new technologies in areas such as data compression, encryption, networking, 3D computer graphics, operating systems, statistical decision theory, and so forth. As demonstrated by the Brooks/Sutherland report, without America's research universities, these and other technologies would not be available to spur our world leadership.

Universities look to the future. The HPCC program has been a huge success in allowing them to see the future through the "time machine" phenomenon. It's important to emphasize that the university research carried out under the HPCC program avoids picking winners and losers. The purpose of publicly funded research in high technology fields is to advance knowledge and create new opportunities that industry can exploit in the medium and long term -- not to determine how the market should develop.

Universities transfer technology in two ways:

• They transfer ideas: by granting patent licenses, and by placing concepts in the public domain.
• They transfer people: students and faculty leave to join or form companies.

It's this pattern of innovation and technology transfer -- the fluid interaction between academia and industry -- that has made America the world leader in information technology, and that will help us maintain this critical lead.

Summary

We believe that the authorization should be flexible in its approach, focused on fundamental research in a broad range of strategic areas and allowing adaptation as new research targets of opportunity appear. The research areas described in the CIC Strategic Plan provide an excellent framework. We need to increase the focus on software for HPCC -- on both the computation and the communication side. And we need to keep in mind that applications are important research drivers and paradigm shifters -- applications such as those covered by the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications component of the HPCC program and the User-Centered Interfaces and Tools component of the CIC Strategic Plan.

I understand the extraordinary constraints under which this Subcommittee is working. The Federal investment in information technology research, though, has been incredibly small compared to the payoff.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.