Computing for National Security

The computing challenges posed by leading-edge science are highly synergistic to those affecting national security problems. This connection fuels the Computing for National Security Department and its efforts to understand how architectures and systems can tackle the challenges posed by data-intensive computing and its impacts on both scientific and national security motivated problems.

The Computing for National Security Department is at the crossroads of research conducted in other initiative areas, as well as activities underway at the laboratory’s signature, data-rich facilities, including the National Synchrotron Light Source II and Center for Functional Nanomaterials.

Some efforts in the Computing for National Security Department focus on data-centric architectures and systems; memory and storage; optical technologies; machine learning and Artificial Intelligence architectures, including neuromorphic; and energy-efficient computing. With leading-edge modeling and simulation capabilities for performance, power, and reliability and a growing advanced measurement laboratory, the Computing for National Security Department conducts research that spans the hardware-software stack and is motivated by data-intensive challenges, large-scale graph problems, and technology at different stages of maturity and integration.

We conduct leading-edge research in:

• Characterizing new materials for computing
• Evaluating/integrating technologies to design next-generation architectures through quantitative methodologies of co-design
• Applying measurement, modeling and simulation, and integrating and operating testbeds (when practical) to assess computing technology and accurately predict performance, power, and reliability at different scales
• Emphasizing new technologies, including “stretch CMOS [complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor]” and “beyond CMOS,” that optimize the performance, usability, and applicability at different scales of computing, from embedded to extreme scales.

Brookhaven’s Computing for National Security Department also benefits from close collaborations with academic, federal agency, and industry partners, combined with the expertise gleaned from computer scientists, applied mathematicians, and domain science researchers found only within the world-class national laboratory complex.