Elon University
The prediction, in brief:

Today’s highest-performance computing technologies are tommorow’s desktop technologies, and today’s desktop techonlogies will find their way into tomorrow’s appliances. The same server technology needed to feed high-speed performance computations with high-data-rate streams of information can be used to disseminate information to American households.

Predictor: Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA) Task Group: High-Performance Computing and Communications Information Technology Subcommittee

Prediction, in context:

In a final draft of their Dec. 1, 1993, recommendations for the National Information Infrastructure, members of the High-Performance Computing Communications and Information Technology subcommittee write the following: ”The high-speed interconnection technology found in these scalable machines will form the basis of tomorrow’s high-speed communications network switches and processor cluster interconnections. It has long been observed that today’s highest-performance computing technologies are tommorow’s desktop technologies, and today’s desktop techonlogies will find their way into tomorrow’s appliances. The same server technology needed to feed high-speed performance computations with high-data-rate streams of information can be used to disseminate information to American households. For example, several of the emerging systems architectures for ‘video-on-demand’ entertainment services of the NII [National Information Infrastructure] are based on massively parallel processors coupled to the kind of software – managed mass-storage systems that have long been attached to supercomputers. HPCC (High-Performance Computing and Communications) HPCS (High-Performance Computing Systems) activities continue to push forward the leading edge of high-performance computing capabilities, while creating system architectures that continue to allow desktop and smaller computers to take advantage of the advancing technology.”

Date of prediction: December 1, 1993

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Pipeline/Switching/Hardware

Name of publication: Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications - Report of the IITA Task Group: High-Performance Computing Communications and Information Technology Subcommittee

Title, headline, chapter name: 1.1 Relationship Between HPCC and NII

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/us/iita.txt

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Kohlhagen, Kelly C.