Creating science-driven computer architecture: A new patch to scientific leadership

We believe that it is critical for the future of high end computing in the United States to bring into existence a new class of computational capability that is optimal for science. In recent years scientific computing has increasingly become dependent on hardware that is designed and optimized for commercial applications. Science in this country has greatly benefited from the improvements in computers that derive from advances in microprocessors following Moore's Law, and a strategy of relying on machines optimized primarily for business applications. However within the last several years, in part because of the challenge presented by the appearance of the Japanese Earth Simulator, the sense has been growing in the scientific community that a new strategy is needed. A more aggressive strategy than reliance only on market forces driven by business applications is necessary in order to achieve a better alignment between the needs of scientific computing and the platforms available. The United States should undertake a program that will result in scientific computing capability that durably returns the advantage to American science, because doing so is crucial to the country's future. Such a strategy must also be sustainable. New classes of computer designs will not only revolutionize the power of supercomputing for science, but will also affect scientific computing at all scales. What is called for is the opening of a new frontier of scientific capability that will ensure that American science is greatly enabled in its pursuit of research in critical areas such as nanoscience, climate prediction, combustion, modeling in the life sciences, and fusion energy, as well as in meeting essential needs for national security. In this white paper we propose a strategy for accomplishing this mission, pursuing different directions of hardware development and deployment, and establishing a highly capable networking and grid infrastructure connecting these platforms to the broad research community.