The Federal HPCC Program provides the stimulation and coordination essential to accelerate progress in R&D in high performance computing, communications, and information technology. Success is measured using both quantitative metrics, which characterize the capabilities of the technologies in these areas, and qualitative characteristics, which attempt to capture the impact of using new information technologies in the Federal government, academia, industry, and by the general public.
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Examples of quantitative metrics include peak or sustained computer
speed (measured in billions of floating point operations per second,
"gigaflops"), data storage capacity (trillions of bytes,
"terabytes"), the computational time needed to solve a
specific application problem, network communication speed (measured
in billions of bits per second, gigabits/s or "Gb/s"), and
network deployment (number of HPCC nodes, number of universities
connected to the Internet through very high bandwidth network links).
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Examples of qualitative characteristics are greater national security, improved public health and safety, and a cleaner environment. |
One method for measuring Program progress is the establishment and subsequent review of yearly milestones described in the next section. This document reports on milestones for three Fiscal Years. The FY 1995 milestones are those that were accomplished by the end of FY 1995 (September 30, 1995). The FY 1996 milestones reported herein are the expected accomplishments for FY 1996, based on Congressional appropriations. FY 1997 milestones describe anticipated accomplishments, assuming Congressional appropriations at the President's requested level. Achievement of these milestones depends on specific program activities that take place within the agencies. The successful completion of these activity-specific milestones across all agencies meets the HPCC Program goals and objectives.
HPCC Program objectives and agencies' project activity milestones are the primary measures of progress when success can be measured quantitatively. When progress cannot obviously be measured quantitatively, qualitative measures are used. One aspect of HPCC research is to identify and use effective measures of progress. Whether quantitative or qualitative, the HPCC Program works with program managers and technical reviewers to assess progress.
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