High Performance Computing - Past, Present and Future

The New Technology Initiative of the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK defined High Performance Computing (HPC) in the following terms:"Computing resources which provide more than an order of magnitude morecomputing power than is normally available on one's desktop."This is a useful definition of HPC - since it reflects the reality that HPC is a moving target: what is state of the art supercomputing this year will be desktop computing in a few years' time. Before we look towards the future for HPC, it is well worthwhile for us to spend a little time surveying the incredible technological progress in computing over the past 50 years. We will then quickly review some "Grand Challenge" scientific applications, followed by a discussion of the Fortran programming language. Fortran is the paradigmatic scientific programming language and in many respects the evolution of Fortran mirrors developments in computer architecture. After a brief look at the ambitious plans of IBM and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the USA to build a true "Grand Challenge" computer by 2004, we conclude with a look at the rather different types of application which are likely to make parallel computers a real commercial success