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Speedy data link will aid fossil fuel research Supercomputing center connected to lab in W.Va. Friday, April 28, 2000 By Byron Spice, Science Editor, Post-Gazette
Correctrion/Clarification: (Published April 29, 2000) An article in yesterday’s editions on a new high-speed computer link between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., misstated the budget for the regional Super Computing Science Consortium. The correct figure is $3.5 million.
Ernie Moniz, a wavy-haired physicist who directs the U.S. Department of Energy's sprawling national laboratory system, jammed two wires together yesterday inside the Mellon Institute in Oakland, ceremonially completing a high-speed computer link with Morgantown, W.Va.
The first use of this regional fiber-optic network couldn't have been more mundane: an audio-visual link that allowed a roomful of dignitaries in suits at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to stare at a roomful of suits at the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Yet Moniz, a DOE undersecretary, predicted this data link would be a critically important tool for energy and environmental researchers, making it easier for them to perform complex computer simulations as they work to design more efficient gas turbines, engines and boilers and to develop cleaner-burning fuels.
As recent hikes in gasoline prices have underscored, the world remains dependent on petroleum and the United States in particular relies on foreign producers.
In the near term, greater fuel efficiency is the only way to reduce that dependency and also cut air pollution, Moniz said, so DOE is racing to shore up its fossil energy research program.
One step occurred in December, when DOE elevated the Federal Energy Technology Center, situated in South Park and Morgantown, to the status of a national lab with a mission to coordinate fossil energy research.
Yesterday, Moniz met with lab Director Rita Bajura to discuss plans to expand the lab.
He wouldn't provide specific figures, but said they hoped to add to the lab's in-house research program, hiring more scientists and support staff and perhaps altering the mix of scientists at the South Park and Morgantown sites.
"We're going to be making the case [for increased funding] and the case is coming along very, very nicely," said Moniz, former head of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The lab now spends about $30 million a year on its own research and another $115 million for research performed by universities and industry.
With 550 staff members at its two sites, it is a tiny part of DOE's national lab system, which employs 30,000 engineers and scientists and includes the nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore.
Computational energy science -- the use of supercomputers to run complex simulations of combustion processes -- is an area that the lab has targeted for particular emphasis.
The Pittsburgh-Morgantown data link energized yesterday will address that need.
Ralph Roskies, scientific co-director of the supercomputing center, said researchers plan to create a "virtual gas turbine," computer simulation software that will help them improve the efficiency of turbines used for producing electricity.
U.S. power plants consume about $70 billion in fuel each year, so even a small percentage increase in efficiency could mean great savings, he noted.
The data link is part of a $3.5 million Super Computing Science Consortium announced in the summer.
The fiber-optic network includes West Virginia University and Carnegie Mellon University, in addition to the national lab and the supercomputing center.
DOE's weapons laboratories in the West are at the cutting edge of supercomputing, with more and faster machines than those available in Pittsburgh. But Moniz said DOE preferred to link the National Energy Technology Lab with the Pittsburgh center.
Having computer expertise geographically near at hand still counts for something, he explained, and Pittsburgh has an excellent reputation.
The Pittsburgh center, a joint operation of Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and Westinghouse Electric Corp., was established by the National Science Foundation but has been forced to find other funding sources since that organization phased out much of its support.
DOE now provides about 30 percent of the center's income, said administrator Beverly Clayton. The annual budget is between $10 million and $12 million.
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