The Future of HPC in Nuclear Security

Advances in computational capabilities have transformed national security. For the U.S. nuclear deterrent these advances have allowed wiser options for a production complex that is a fraction of its cold war-era size, enabled more effective military solutions, and have been a safeguard against consequential mistakes. An ability to faithfully simulate increasingly complex physical systems in human learning times has been the key to this progress. Experience spanning almost 80 years shows that qualitative leaps in simulation capabilities have allowed new contributions to national security. Through detailed quantitative analysis of representative simulations, we show that reliance on technologies developed for popular market applications will likely stall progress. We argue that if the United States is to continue benefiting from advances in computing, investments in deeper co-design of hardware and software—addressing levels of branching and sparsity not found in machine learning or most other major market applications—will be needed.