To advance the state of the art of its proprietary photochromic technology used in Transitions® eyewear and speed its time-to-market, PPG Industries enlisted the help of high performance computing. Advancing photochromic technology, which allows lenses to change from clear to dark and block harmful ultraviolet rays, involves complex modeling and simulation of molecules at the atomic and quantum levels. By enlisting the help of the NSF-funded Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and its powerful high performance computing capabilities, PPG’s R&D organization was able to rapidly create the next generation of photochromic dyes, and move out in front of its competition.

The Council on Competitiveness and the Ohio Supercomputer Center co-hosted a day-long workshop: Accelerating Innovation For Competitive Advantage: The Need For HPC Application Software Solutions. This workshop examined the gap between the production-quality, application software that industry needs and the software that is available. The report offers a roadmap of public-private sector actions to address this challenge. Participants included HPC users, independent software vendors (ISVs), university researchers, hardware vendors, and government scientists and engineers.

This study benchmarks the U.S. aerospace, automotive, bio-life sciences and energy industries’ use of high performance computing (HPC) to drive innovation for global competitiveness. It is the first study to attempt to do this and to understand how deeply within each industry’s supply chain HPC has been embraced.

The most noteworthy finding was that U.S. tier 1 energy firms are outpacing other U.S. industries in integrating HPC into critical business functions. The most unexpected finding was that few suppliers to U.S. tier 1 companies in the surveyed industries use HPC (or even desktop workstations) today.

The Council Recommends that:

• Congress establish a national, low-carbon energy standard for electric utilities that encompass a minimum of 25 percent renewables by 2025. 

• Congress establish a price floor for gasoline that is sufficient to accelerate demand for fuel-efficient vehicles. 

• Congress enact legislation that will result in the establishment of a consistent, predictable and transparent price on carbon emissions.