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Durable Engines of Discovery.

The article examines how U.S. federal research funding has shaped developments in computing and computational science since the 1940s. It highlights investments by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the creation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, and the de...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 68; no. 12; pp. 66 - 74
Main Author: Dongarra, Jack
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Dec2025
Subjects:
Government aid to research
Scientific computing
Computer science research
Software libraries (Computer programming)
Government agencies
United States
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article examines how U.S. federal research funding has shaped developments in computing and computational science since the 1940s. It highlights investments by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the creation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, and the development of software libraries like Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS), as well as broader impacts on economic competitiveness, industrial innovation, and workforce development.