INDUSTRY

IDC research sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness helped to bring about the Bush Administration's increased focus on supercomputing, IDC reported today. In his State of the Union address and in his speech the next day, President Bush proposed to increase the focus on supercomputing and to "double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources." To support this goal, President Bush proposed doubling the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE) budgets over the next decade. "Extensive studies carried out by IDC for the Council on Competitiveness found that a broad spectrum of U.S. industries cannot compete effectively without supercomputing and are currently hampered by inadequate supercomputing advances," said Dr. Earl Joseph, IDC's research vice president for High Performance Systems. "The studies concluded that increased government support for supercomputing innovation could boost the global competitiveness of America's aerospace, automotive, energy, entertainment, environmental, and life sciences industries, as well as others." Joseph said greater funding for the NSF, DOE, and other agencies would help speed supercomputing innovation because researchers at federal agencies like these push supercomputers to their limits and frequently enter into supercomputing-based collaborations with industry. "The Council on Competitiveness, through its High Performance Computing (HPC) Project and Advisory Committee made up of U.S. business leaders, has done an outstanding job of educating Congress and the Administration about the tight linkage between supercomputing and America's global competitiveness. IDC is proud to partner with the Council on important research initiatives like this. We were pleased to provide the findings that identified U.S. industry's indispensable need for supercomputing," Joseph said. The two major studies IDC conducted for the Council can be viewed or downloaded at no charge at its Web site.