Analysis of National Supercomputing Promotion Act of 2011

Abstract

High performance computer is one that processes complex largescale computing tasks in the area of scientific calculations difficult to solve with ordinary computer, which is also called supercomputer. Generally, a high performance computer refers to one within the world's top 500 based on computer performance. Currently, 50 years past since the successful commercialization of CDC6600 with 9MFLOPS (One million times/second) operation processing capability in 1964, developing high performance computers of TFLOPS (One trillion times/second) and PFLOPS (Quadrillion times/second) is in progress and application. The high performance computer can be said to be a public resource the government should develop and provide. To apply the public resource effectively, at the state level, high performance computer related technologies should be promoted such as high performance computer related research and development, effective distribution of the resources and training of professional manpower. Through this, a high performance computer development base should be created and contribute to the people's quality of life improvement and national economy development. By this necessity, South Korea carried out procedures for the enactment of a law for high performance computer related technology development, application and promotion since 2009. Accordingly, in June, 2011, ‘National Supercomputing Promotion Act’ was enacted. This paper will investigate the trend of the domestic/overseas policies for high performance computer, analyze and sum up the major contents of this law. Keyword: High Performance Computer, Cyberinfrastructure, Supercomputer, Promotion Act, Computational Science