Institute Steering Committee Member Talks Exascale Computing

Hariri Institute Steering Committee member, Roscoe Giles, recently spoke to BU Today about his work on exascale computing technology and its ability to “solve new problems or old problems in new ways.”

Giles, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, previously served as a member and chairman of the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (ASCAC). ASCAC is working to develop exascale capability, which is projected to reach functionality by 2023. The virtue of exascale computing is that it allows not only exponentially greater computing power, but also wider access to constituent data. The prospective exascale computer, Giles says, will be able to solve problems that call for large-scale simulations on large-scale data that no computer today can support, such as the behavior of billions of molecules inside a car engine, or a global map of climate change that compiles data specific to areas as small as 1 square kilometer of the Earth’s surface. Giles explores these and other possibilities as well as potential security shortcomings and political significance in the full article.

[Read the full BU Today article]