42 U.S.C. § 18642 — Advanced scientific computing research

(a) In general — As part of the activities authorized under section 7139, the Director must carry out, working with academia and relevant public and private entities, a research, development, and demonstration program to: (1) steward applied mathematics, computational science, and computer science research relevant to the Department's missions and U.S. competitiveness; (2) develop modeling, simulation, and other computational tools relevant to other scientific disciplines and to developing new energy and other technologies; (3) advance computing and networking capabilities for data-driven discovery; and (4) develop advanced scientific computing hardware and software tools for science and engineering. (b) Omitted (c) High-performance computing and networking research (1) Director — The Director must support research in high-performance computing and networking relevant to energy applications, including modeling, simulation, and advanced data analytics for the Secretary's basic and applied energy research programs. (2) Coordination — The Under Secretary for Science must ensure the Department's activities, including under this section, are coordinated to meet the computational and networking research and facility needs of the Office of Science and other relevant energy programs, working with other federal agencies as appropriate. (d) Applied mathematics and software development for high-end computing systems and computer sciences research (1) In general — The Director must develop, test, and support: (A) mathematics, statistics, and algorithms for modeling complex systems relevant to the Department's missions, including on advanced computing architectures; and (B) tools, languages, programming environments, and operations for "high-end computing systems" (as defined in title 15, section 5541). (2) Portfolio balance — (A) The Director must maintain a balanced portfolio within the advanced scientific computing research and development program (established under the Energy Policy Act of 2005) that supports robust investment in (i) applied mathematical, computational, and computer sciences research relevant to the Department's mission, including foundational and new and emerging computing technologies, and (ii) the associated high-performance computing hardware and facilities. (B) Exascale ecosystem sustainment — (i) Congress believes the Exascale Computing Project has successfully created a broad ecosystem of shared software packages, novel evaluation systems, and applications relevant to the Department's science and engineering needs, and that these must be maintained and improved so the deployed systems' full potential can keep being realized. (ii) The Secretary must work to sustain and evolve that ecosystem, so the exascale software stack and other research software stays maintained, hardened, optimized, and reliably available for the user community over the long term, on exascale systems and beyond. (e) Advanced computing program (1) In general — The Secretary must establish a program to develop and carry out a strategy for computing systems that go beyond exascale. In doing so, the Secretary must: (A) maintain foundational research programs in mathematical, computational, and computer sciences focused on new and emerging computing needs, including post-Moore's-law computing architectures, new approaches to modeling and simulation, artificial intelligence and scientific machine learning, quantum computing, edge computing, extreme heterogeneity (including possible quantum accelerators), and distributed high-performance computing; (B) keep best practices and support for the essential hardware, applications, and software of the Exascale Computing Program needed to sustain a long-term, capable software ecosystem for exascale and beyond; and (C) develop a Department-wide strategy for balancing on-premises and cloud-based computing and scientific data management. (2) Report — Not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022, the Secretary must submit to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources a report on developing and carrying out this strategy. (f) Guidance on mitigation of bias in high-performance computing capabilities — When using high-performance computing systems for research — including through machine learning algorithms for data analysis and artificial intelligence — the Secretary must issue, and make sure everyone follows, guidance for the Department, the National Laboratories, and users on how to use these capabilities in a way that mitigates, and as much as practicable avoids, harmful algorithmic bias. (g) Architectural research in heterogeneous computing systems (1) In general — The Secretary must carry out a research and development program on heterogeneous and reconfigurable computing systems, to expand understanding of how such systems can deliver high performance and high efficiency for the Department's mission challenges. The program must include research exploring how big data analytics, simulation, and artificial intelligence converge to shape the design of these computing system architectures. (2) Coordination — The Secretary must ensure this research is coordinated with materials research supported by the Basic Energy Sciences program. (h) Energy efficient computing program (1) In general — The Secretary must support fundamental research, development, and demonstration of energy-efficient computing and data center technologies relevant to advanced computing applications, including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and scientific machine learning. (2) Execution — (A) The Secretary must: (i) establish a partnership among National Laboratories, industry partners, and institutions of higher education to codesign energy-efficient hardware, technology, software, and applications across the Department's program offices, and provide partners access to energy-efficient computing resources; (ii) develop hardware and software that decreases the energy needs of advanced computing, including through data center codesign; (iii) consider multiple heterogeneous computing architectures in collaboration with the program in subsection (g), including neuromorphic computing, persistent computing, and ultrafast networking; and (iv) provide, on a competitive, merit-reviewed basis as appropriate, access for researchers from institutions of higher education, National Laboratories, industry, and other federal agencies to the energy-efficient computing technologies developed. (B) The Secretary must select partners for this partnership through a competitive, merit-review process. (C) Not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022, the Secretary must submit to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources a report on (i) the activities carried out under (A), and (ii) how the program is coordinated and managed to ensure an integrated research program across the Department. (i) Energy Sciences Network (1) In general — The Secretary must provide for upgrades to the Energy Sciences Network user facility, to meet the Department's need for highly reliable data transport for large-scale science. (2) Capabilities — The Secretary must ensure the network can: (A) provide high-bandwidth scientific networking across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean; (B) ensure reliability; (C) protect the network infrastructure from cyberattacks; (D) manage the fast-growing volume of data from the Department's National Laboratories and sites, user facilities, experiments, and sensors; and (E) contribute to integrating heterogeneous computing frameworks and systems. (j) Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (1) In general — The Secretary must support this fellowship program to help graduate students collaborate with National Laboratory researchers, and to help build a diverse and inclusive computational workforce for research across computational science relevant to the Department's mission, including quantum computing. (2) Funding — Out of the funds authorized for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program, Congress authorizes: $15,750,000 for fiscal year 2023; $16,537,500 for fiscal year 2024; $17,364,375 for fiscal year 2025; $18,232,594 for fiscal year 2026; and $19,144,223 for fiscal year 2027. (k) Authorization of appropriations — Out of the funds authorized for the Office of Science in a fiscal year, Congress authorizes the Secretary to carry out this section's activities: $1,126,950,000 for fiscal year 2023; $1,194,109,500 for fiscal year 2024; $1,265,275,695 for fiscal year 2025; $1,340,687,843 for fiscal year 2026; and $1,420,599,500 for fiscal year 2027.