The IITA component of the HPCC Program is a research and development program intended to:
National Challenges are major societal needs that high performance computing and communications technology can address in areas such as the civil infrastructure, digital libraries, education and lifelong learning, energy management, the environment, health care, manufacturing processes and products, national security, and public access to government information. The list of National Challenges is dynamic and will expand as the technologies and other applications mature.
Solution of these National Challenges requires a three-part technology base consisting of the following services, tools, and interfaces:
The IITA component depends critically on the technologies already developed by the HPCC Program, and places its own set of demands on the Program. IITA efforts will strengthen the underlying HPCC technology base, broaden the market for these technologies, and accelerate industry development of the NII.
The Federal agencies that participate in the HPCC Program will work with industry and academia to develop these technologies. The NII, however, will be built and operated primarily by the private sector, which can form new markets for products and services enabled by the emerging NII. This joint effort by government, industry, academia, and the public to develop the NII and address the National Challenges will require:
Users of the early NII will be able to take advantage of small to moderate capacity computers and slow to medium speed communications, provided they have high quality user interfaces and access to the applications. As user interfaces improve, more computing and communications performance may be required. This can be achieved through the continual advances in the underlying technology developed under the HPCC Program.
The HPCC Program's original focus on research and development will continue to play a pivotal role in enhancing the Nation's computing and communications capabilities. For example, the Grand Challenges will continue to provide the scientific focus for critical computing technologies because of their profound and direct impact on fundamental knowledge. The IITA component will enable the extension of these technologies and the development of National Challenge applications that have immediate and direct impact on critical information systems affecting every individual in the Nation. Distinctions between National Challenges and Grand Challenges are shown in the table on the next page.
Grand Challenges National Challenges Focus Computation intensive Information intensive Users Computer scientists and Information and application computational scientists, users in major national sectors, extending to scientists extending to all sectors and engineers (numbering in (numbering in the hundreds of millions) the millions) Distribution of Focus on largest systems at Focus on distributed systems of HPCS Resources "centers" and smaller systems moderate scale with many users, for software development scaling with increasing number of users Main HPCS Use Workstation client/server systems Workstation client/server systems for computing and systems for access to and processing of development, scaling with information with extensions to scientific needs mobile and wireless systems Main NREN Use Share computing resources, Support distributed systems data, and software; collaboration Main ASTA Use Scientific software for Computationally-based services computationally-intensive applications Privacy and Security Desirable but not critical Essential for deployment to deployment; essential in long term Copyright Desirable but not critical Essential for deployment to deployment Network Performance High among largest scale Nominal to all involved, moderate computer systems and users to most when needed, high to needing visualization those with greatest need
The following two examples illustrate potential applications of the NII.
Having taken ill, a traveler is hospitalized and undergoes tests, including X-rays, CAT scans, and MRI. At the same time, the attending medical professionals quickly retrieve test results from the traveler's last physical examination. The images are compared, diagnoses made, and treatments prescribed. This scenario is difficult if not impossible to implement today, in part because diagnostic images are commonly not in computer-readable form and network speeds are generally too slow to transmit large three-dimensional image data sets.
Truly remote medical care will depend on services, standards, tools, and user interfaces to store, find, transmit, manipulate, display (and superimpose), compare, and analyze three-dimensional image data from several sources. Diagnostic test results and large image data sets from the physical examination must be available on computers that can be accessed from the hospital's computers over a communications network; they must be retrieved quickly; the scientific data used in guiding the diagnosis and treatment must also be available from electronic libraries and must be quickly retrieved; and the privacy of these patient records must be protected. All of this supposes completion of rather extensive and complex inter- professional medical arrangements. In addition, it must be done using a user interface customized for the practice of "distance medicine," including collaborations among different sources of expertise.
Using a real-time weather forecast for the area 20 miles directly ahead, a trucker diverts to an alternate route and reduces by hours the potential delay in delivering critically needed parts to a company that uses a just-in-time inventory system. Relayed from a weather forecast center to the truck's on board navigation system, this highly accurate forecast that pinpoints developing adverse weather conditions is made possible by the use of new computer weather prediction models that exploit the capabilities of high performance, massively parallel computing systems.
Already, advances in computing and communications technologies have led to significant improvements in weather forecasting. As illustrated in the recent case of Hurricane Andrew in Florida, this improved forecasting can save lives as well as millions of dollars in evacuation costs through better targeting of evacuation efforts.
Services, standards, tools, and user interfaces are required to build and support systems for acquiring large amounts of three- dimensional environmental data from different sources (e.g., in situ and remote sensing observations). These systems must also support high resolution modeling using these data, incorporating improved representations of the physical environment, and a real-time information dissemination capability to provide detailed forecast information for hundreds of different locations to thousands of users.
Unlike the first example, the user community for environmental information is larger and more diverse. Weather forecasts are needed by the general public, and for aviation, ship navigation, and agriculture, for example, while HPCC-funded researchers use much of the same observational data to model global change. Starting with user interfaces tailored to different kinds of users, individual customize them for their own needs. The delivery and use of environmental information for this broad range of applications is performed by a partnership of government and value added private sector information companies, all part of the NII.
The IITA component will enable the development of an integrated infrastructure so that these two apparently unrelated applications can work together efficiently. This infrastructure includes:
The IITA component will demonstrate these technologies through testbed and pilot projects. These projects will evaluate new technologies, provide training in their use, and demonstrate specific National Challenge applications. Successful projects will serve as models to be further refined and engineered for larger scale deployment.
In order to facilitate the deployment of the NII by the private sector, the government will work closely with industry, academia, and users on all aspects of the IITA component. The private sector is expected to deploy many of its own applications, in areas such as commerce and entertainment. The government's goal is that from the user's point of view these applications will be integrated as seamlessly as possible into a single NII, with appropriate use restrictions and protections incorporated as needed.
The IITA component is organized into four interrelated elements. Each builds on the foundation of the HPCC Program and, in large measure, builds on its predecessor.
These are the basic services and interfaces, and the underlying technical conventions and standards, that provide the common foundation for a broad range of information technology-based applications. Building upon the Interagency Internet, these modular units will in turn be the building blocks of the NII applications. These include:
This element includes a comprehensive suite of software tools and applications methods such as software toolkits and software generators for use by computer programmers, tools and methods for integrating elements of virtual reality systems, collaboration software systems, and applications-specific templates and frameworks. They will be used to:
This element also includes the systems simulators and modeling methods to be used in designing the technology underlying the NII.
In the future, high level user interfaces will bridge the gap between users and the NII. A large collection of advanced human/machine interfaces must be developed in order to satisfy the vast range of preferences, abilities, and disabilities that affect how users interact with the NII.
Intelligent interfaces will include elements of computer vision and image understanding; understanding of language, speech, handwriting, and printed text; knowledge-based processing; and multimedia computing and visualization. In order to enhance their functionality and ease of use, interfaces will access models of both the underlying infrastructure and the users. Just as people now do their own "desktop publishing," they will have their own "desktop work environments," environments that will extend to mobile and wireless networking modes. Users will be able to customize these environments, thereby reducing reliance on intermediate interface developers.
National Challenges are fundamental applications that have broad and direct impact on the Nation's competitiveness and well-being. They will enable people to handle the increasing amounts of information and the increasing dynamics of the 21st century.
Using selected HPCC enabling technologies and the technologies developed by the other IITA elements, this element will use pilot projects to develop "customized applications" in areas such as the civil infrastructure, digital libraries, education and lifelong learning, energy management, the environment, health care, manufacturing processes and products, national security, and public access to government information. Detailed goals of four of these applications areas are as follows:
Develop systems and technology to:
Prototypic scientific data bases, including remote-sensing images, will be developed. Librarians and other users will be trained in the development and use of this technology.
Education and Lifelong Learning
Conduct pilot projects that connect elementary and secondary schools to networks through which students and teachers can:
Health Care
Develop and provide:
Research and development to: