Remarks Prepared for Energy Secretary Abraham
Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here.
hardly need to tell all of you how vital it is for the United States to stay on the cutting edge of supercomputing technology. In fact, our administration, and the Energy Department in particular, are working hard to reclaim America’s world-wide lead in supercomputing. Today’s events are a major part of that goal—a goal I strongly believe we can and will achieve.
The simulation and modeling capacities of ultra-performance computers are becoming increasingly valuable in a host of scientific research areas, from biology and climatology to hydrodynamics and materials engineering. But as important and useful as those functions are, it is in the area of national security—Livermore’s core mission—that the capacities provided by supercomputing are absolutely vital.
Ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the nation’s nuclear stockpile is our Department’s highest responsibility. And I want to thank all of you here for all your hard work, dedication and commitment to upholding that responsibility. I recognize that for you to do your jobs, you must have the best available tools. Which is why I am so pleased to be here to open this new state-of-the-art simulation facility, and to sign my name to BlueGene/L and Purple.
Two years ago in Baltimore, I announced the contract for the world’s two fastest supercomputers. With the opening of this new building, we are much closer to making that promise a reality. Our goal is a computer system that can process 100 trillion floating-point operations per second. This is the capability required to perform 3D, full-system weapon simulations for essential stockpile work. When completed, it will represent an improvement in computing power by a factor of one million over that used for weapons simulations in 1995. Purple’s success will be the fulfillment of that very ambitious goal.
BlueGene/L, at a peak performance of 360 teraflops, will be the fastest supercomputer in the world when it becomes fully operational by June 2005, less than a year from today. This new capability is an essential accomplishment both for science and stockpile stewardship.
I must say, however, that I am concerned about one thing. In looking through the background material on BlueGene/L I noticed that one of its applications will be something called “kinetic Monte Carlo.” I hope that’s not what it sounds like. Because let me tell you here and now, we are not going to mis-use this incredible machine in any dubious scheme to beat the odds in blackjack.
Joking aside, the work you do here is very serious. And to help you do it, you will soon have a very serious new computer system. I am very proud of the work our Department has done, and in particular, I am very proud of all you have done, in the essential work of nuclear stockpile stewardship.
Thank you again for being here, and for all your dedicated efforts in making this new facility possible.
