The Hill Op-Ed

To read the full article, which appeared on TheHill.com on July 20, 2016,please click here.

ByBill Mannel, Vice President and General Manager of High-Performance Computing, Big Data and Internet of Things at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

In recent months, scientists at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center reported progress in the fields of genomics, public health, chemistry and machine learning thanks, in part, to a new National Science Foundation-funded supercomputer Bridges. The system, which was also used to model the possible benefits of influenza vaccine choice, provided compelling results that suggest adopting a vaccine choice policy could curtail thenational cost and enormous annual burdenof influenza in the United States.

Federal funding and support for supercomputers or high-performance computing (HPC) projects, such as Bridges, is critical for enabling new scientific discoveries and cures for diseases, enhancing national security and cyber defenses and improving economic competitiveness. Yet, U.S. leadership in this market is being contested as other countries are beginning to invest aggressively as they recognize the technologys strategic importance.

Think of it like the Space Race of the 1960s, but with investment going into software and large-scale HPC systems rather than rockets. The stakes are different, but the potential for world-changing results is just as important.

Click here to read the full op-ed in The Hill about high-performance computing.