Last week, the Obama administration issued an executive order creating a National Strategic Computing Initiative to "maximize the benefits of high-performance computing research, development and deployment". The executive order, which is not lengthy, is well worth reading; it both establishes a series of  objectives and defines roles and responsibilities among a large number of government agencies involved in the program.

The executive order is here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/executive-order-creating-national-strategic-computing-initiative

And there is also a blog post from Tom Kalil and Jason Miller providing additional context here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/07/29/advancing-us-leadership-high-performance-computing

One point I found particularly interesting. While the "objectives" section of the order speaks, as one might expect, of exascale computing systems, it also specifically identifies as an objective "Increasing coherence beween the technology base used for modelling and simulation and that used for data analytic computing." This is a disconnect that has been growing increasingly evident with the rise of"big data" and "data analytics" in recent years.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI