HPC will grow under the Obama Government

The House Appropriations Committee released the bill text and the accompanying committee report "THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009 [DISCUSSION DRAFT]" on January 15.

Computing Research Policy Blog quickly analyzed it in

More Detail on 2009 House Dem Stimulus and Recovery Plan (January 15, 2009):
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000715.html

The blog concluded that "In summary, though, this looks awfully good to us and will likely go a long way towards recharging the Nation's innovation engine."

The conclusion looks natural because a large amount of additional investmentis scheduled for 2009 in the report. For example, the Office of Science in the Department of Energy will see an increase of $2 billion under this plan, NSF will see an increase of $3 billion overall and NIH will receive $1.5 billion for grants to improve university research facilities and another $1.5 billion in new research funding. These are well known players driving HPC.

Therefore I believe that possibility for postponing the U.S. Petascale Computing projects such as on-going Blue Waters Project, due to the U.S. economic crisis, was clearly wiped away.

According to a revised IDC New HPC Market Forecast that I received from Earl Joseph yesterday morning, the new HPC base case forecast predicts a decline in 2008, followed by an additional modest decline in 2009, then a return to growth in 2010 to 2012, resulting in an overall CAGR from 2007 to 2012 of 3.1% in revenues.

In 2008-2012, although HPC market looks very severe in major industrial sectors, such as U.S. automotives, finance, they assume that the government and academic sectors are nuetral and the national security, energy, game, digital-contents sectors and Petascale initiative will be accelerator. I think that it is reaonably consistent with the Stimulus and Recovery Plan.


While the Obama Government began such a stimulus and recovery plan for resuscitation rapidly, our Japanese government has to spend time by childish argument in the Diet and cannot show aggresive plan yet, far from the Obama Government. That may be very anxious.