As with successive generations of
other large-scale scientific instruments,
each new generation of advanced
computing brings new capabilities,
along with technical design
challenges and economic trade-offs.
Broadly speaking, data-generation capabilities
in most science domains are
growing more rapidly than compute
capabilities, causing these domains
to become data-intensive.23 Highperformance
computers and big-data
systems are tied inextricably to the
broader computing ecosystem and its
designs and markets. They also support
national-security needs and economic
competitiveness in ways that
distinguish them from most other scientific
instruments.