Five senior executives from Cray, HP, IBM, Intel and SGI weigh in on the new National Strategic Computing Initiative’s (NSCI) prospects in this exclusive HPCwire podcast. Discussion ranged widely from the need for long-term funding for leading edge technology, to the software industry’s past slowness to get involved with advancing hardware technology development, to fostering new HPC talent – even on whether the creation of a U.S. Department of IT makes sense. These are still early days but the consensus is NSCI will succeed to a substantial degree though worries over whether electioneering and the coming change in The Administration might slow momentum. The panelists all agreed NSCI is a promising first step and long-overdue overarching recognition of HPC’s importance. John Russell, Tabor Editorial Director and HPCwire Managing Editor, moderated the discussion. A list of the participants is below:

Steve Scott, Cray – Steve serves as senior vice president and chief technology officer. He’s responsible for guiding the long-term technical direction of Cray’s supercomputing, storage and analytics products.

Bill Mannel, HP – Bill is vice president and general manager of high-performance computing (HPC) and big data solutions for HP Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dave Turek, IBM – Dave is vice president of high performance computing at IBM with responsibility for IBM’s overall high performance computing strategy and market engagement.

Hugo Saleh, Intel – Hugo is the director of marketing and industry development for Intel’s technical computing group and has held a variety of engineering and leadership roles since joining Intel in 2000.

Gabriel Broner, SGI – Gabriel is vice president and general manager of high performance computing at SGI.