Bush Advanced Computer Plan Could Boost State Industry
California’s high-tech industries and researchers will get a big boost from a Bush Administration plan to spend $1.9 billion over five years on advanced computer technology, experts said.
White House science adviser D. Allan Bromley released a report Sunday by the White House Office of Science and Technology proposing the program to promote advanced computing capabilities, including the creation of a fiber-optic network linking the nation’s supercomputers.
The plan would not just fund more research, but would also try to better coordinate government, educational and industry development of computers and computer programs.
It envisions establishing a National Research and Education Network to transmit data between supercomputers at speeds of up to 3 gigabits--3 billion bits--per second, or 2,000 times faster than current computer networks. Ultimately, the network would link homes and businesses throughout the nation.
Information Flow
That would make it easier for California’s computer-chip designers to get prototypes made, seismic scientists to analyze earthquake data, aerospace manufacturers to manage the production of planes, and biotechnology companies to map genes, experts said.
When the super-fast network becomes available to the home or business computer user, it will be like putting regular cars on the Indianapolis race track, said Henri Aebischer, Apple Computer’s director of networking and communication product marketing.
“They won’t go as fast as an Indy car, but they’ll go a lot faster than usual,” he said.
For example, he said, current technology doesn’t allow moving images generated by a computer to be sent over telephone lines except very slowly.
But with the fiber-optic technology envisioned by the government plan, far-off doctors will be able to review medical scanner pictures in real time, experts will examine plane crash scenes via remote cameras, and advertising agencies will let clients immediately review the latest ad, all on computer screens.
“Let’s say you have a grandmother in Boston. Rather than flying there for her birthday you make a little film. She will hear a little ring or a bell and she will go to her computer and punch a button and see her grandchildren singing happy birthday,” Aebischer said.
That sort of possibility can mean big business for entrepreneurs, and for companies like Apple that build business computers.
Charles L. Seitz, a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and a frequent technology adviser to the federal government, welcomed the Bush strategy.
“So much of the modern scientific enterprise is already based . . . on these cooperative efforts,” he said, noting that the super-fast network would augment an existing network, called Internet, which already has yielded great research and commercial benefits.
The existing network sends information at about 1.5 million bits per second.
“A decade ago there were 40 or 50 computers on the national network,” Seitz said. “Then this just grew like Topsy. There are easily hundreds of thousands now.”
Seitz already uses the computer network when he designs advanced computer chips. He sends his plans electronically to the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, where a computer-managed program gets them built.
Christopher Willard, a senior analyst at Dataquest Inc., a high-tech market research firm in San Jose, said the proposal will have special impact in California because there is so much high-tech industry in the state.
“I think the long-term effect for industry will be a technological trickle-down where people learn how to use these highly sophisticated systems, design the software, and that moves into industry, where it gets into the product development department,” he said.
The results, Willard said, could range from the National Security Agency breaking codes faster to General Electric building a better light bulb.
