Five reasons the US tech lead is in danger

There is a worldwide race to build the next generation of supercomputers, but US efforts have stalled. China and Europe, in particular, are moving ahead with programs. And Japan is increasingly picking up the pace. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has yet to put in place a plan for achieving exascale computing. Exascale programs aren't just about building supercomputers. Development of exascale platforms will also seed new processor, storage and networking technologies. Breakthroughs in these areas in other countries may give rise to new challenges to US tech dominance. Why are exascale systems important? The systems, which would be capable of achieving 1 quintillion (or 1 million trillion) floating point operations per second -- one thousand times more powerful than a petaflop system -- could be capable of solving the world's greatest scientific problems. If the United States falls behind, the research would increasingly be done in other countries. In sum, the world has awakened to need of high performance computing. The United States, for now, is dozing.

Five reasons that the U.S. lead in high performance computing is in danger:

1. The United States doesn't have an exascale plan.
2. It's mistakenly assumed the United States will win the exascale race.
3. The path to exascale is uncharted, which opens the door to challengers.
4. If the United States doesn't lead in exascale, what happens when planning for zetascale begins?
5. The United States hasn't explained what's at stake.

(11/23)