Language that would have given Livermore explicit permission to purchase a supercomputer from Tokyo-based NEC Corp. was adopted by a Senate panel and modified slightly by the full Senate as part of a 1991 funding bill that covers energy and water projects. The wording was watered down, however, in a conference agreement with the House of Representatives in the last few weeks before Congress adjourned last month. The final version gives the Energy Department, which funds the $1 billion-a-year nuclear weapons lab, permission to hold "an open competition" for a supercomputer at some unspecified time.
However, the debate is expected to continue into next year, when the world's leading supercomputer companies unveil the next generation of these multimillion-dollar machines. And it evokes memories of a similar attempt in 1987 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to buy an NEC supercomputer.
Officials at the Commerce and Defense departments, as well as ...
