A national computing initiative: a summary

One of the most significant reports in recent years that has brought about fundamental changes in the way that science is done in the United States was the LAX Report [2]. The LAX report as discussed below led to a number of major achievements including the establishment of the National Science Foundation Supercomputing Centers. In late 1986 in response to congressional inquiries, the Federal Coordination Council on Science, Engineering and Technology (FCCSET) recommended that expert panels be convened in order to assess high-performance computing. A number of federal agencies including NSF, DOE, DOD, DARPA and NASA participated in a workshop organized by SIAM in early February 1987. There were thirty-seven participants (Table 1 ) in the workshop drawn from industry, academe and government including the national laboratories. This workshop wrote a report [1] entitled "A National Computing Initiative. The Agenda for Leadership" with senior authors H.J. Ravech6, D.H. Lawrie and A.M. Despain who chaired subpanels on Applications, Advanced Systems and Parallel Computing, respectively. The goal of the initiative as described in the report was to foster significantly improved computational technologies and promote innovative applications of high performance computing. This article summarizes the