In their recent report entitled “A Strategic Agenda for European Leadership in Supercomputing: HPC 2020” IDC said that it expects the DoE to seek $5 Billion in funding for a set of Exascale computers.
Within the DOE, both the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration have begun initiatives focused on exascale supercomputing in this decade. IDC believes that the DOE will seek in excess of $5 billion (€3.75 billion) to develop multiple exascale computers.
Could there be an National Exascale Initiative in our future? The recent announcement of the 2.5 Petaflop Tianhe-1A supercomputer in China set off a media frenzy in the mainstream press last week, and nothing moves legislation like fear. At the same time, the IDC report is recommending that Europe step up its HPC investments in a big way.
The interesting thing to me is that there is already a host of Exascale projects going on worldwide today, as cited in the same report. And this is all for a computational capability that is eight or more years away. Many are saying the required advancements in power efficiency will never happen, but I believe that in the end it will all come down to finding someone willing to write the check.
A tip of the hat goes to Timothy Prickett Morgan at the Register for pointing us to this story.
