3.5 Computing and Software Technology
Computing and software technologies (as is the case with M&S) are crucial to all joint warfighting needs and capabilities. In the information age, warfighting is adversely affected or significantly enhanced by the speed, accuracy, quality, relevance, and comprehensiveness of information provided for applications such as C4I, precision weapons, logistics support, and readiness support. In such applications, a few well-trained humans, augmented or assisted by high-performance, automated, and intelligent systems, can outperform dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of semiautomated or poorly automated personnel. The computing and software foundations developed by this subarea provide the advantage in any conflict or operation permitting early, decisive victory or rapid noncombat response in operations other than war with minimal cost in assets and human life. Advancements in software and software development productivity support both the capability and the affordability of new and upgraded defense systems. Computing and software technologies such as software engineering, software reengineering, software reuse, and software acquisition strategy will have enormous impact on future weapon systems, weapon system upgrades, product improvements, and system performance advancements. Pervasive throughout all technology areas, and as important, are embedded high-performance computing, embedded software and system engineering, distributed and interacting systems, knowledge-base design, advanced hardware/software system architecture technology, information presentation and interaction, and intelligent information technology.
3.5.2.1 Goals and Timeframes. Four related but distinct technical aspects make up the computing and software technology subarea:
Information Presentation and Interaction. Humans perform best when they are presented with all the relevant information when they need it, as they need it, where they need it, with no extraneous or conflicting information. Such a presentation of information should also be in chunks that a human can handle, and in a highly comprehensible form. This is a tall order with currently available technologies. The overall goal of the proposed DTOs is to allow humans in the loop to exploit all information without reaching "information overload" and respond in a timely manner. The approach is to make maximum effective use of all the human senses and intellect to perform this task in as natural appearing an environment as possible.
One technical challenge is to build and incorporate affordable, high-resolution, large 3D and time-resolved displays into systems to depict an accurate picture of the situation to the visual senses and further enhance those system interfaces with natural language and gesture I/O. A second technical challenge is to provide a truly interactive VR depiction of the situation with human "immersion." The situation depiction will then be further enhanced by removing artificial tethers such as helmet-mounted displays and data gloves, providing real-time updates to the depiction, and allowing the immersion of multiple humans at the same time. Some visualization aids rely on sensing the location and orientation of the participants. Participant location and orientation are used to adjust the presented visual scenes. Yet another problem is that inaccurate or delayed tracking can induce virtual reality sickness (akin to motion sickness). Therefore, a third challenge is improvements in measurement resolution, accuracy, and responsiveness needed to promote improvements in aids to visualization.
| Short Term (97-98) | Mid Term (99-01) | Long Term (02+) |
|---|---|---|
| INFORMATION PRESENTATION AND INTERACTION | ||
| Heavily tethered, helmet-mounted 3D displays | Single-user immersible VR with precalculated displays, tether-free 3D displays | Multiple-user immersible VR, real-time displays |
| Limited (10,000-word), speaker-dependent vocabularies | Medium (50,000-word), speaker-independent vocabularies | Large, speaker-independent vocabularies |
| Single-user, single-discipline collaboration | Multiple-user, single-discipline collaboration | Multiple-user, multiple-discipline collaboration |
| MACHINE INTELLIGENCE | ||
| Real-time planning for intelligent devices | Real-time adaptation of intelligent devices to changing situations | Plan creation and execution among cooperating intelligent robots |
| Autonomous devices operating independently on single tasks | Team tactics demonstrated for autonomous multiagent behavior | Self-initiated plan creation and execution among cooperating intelligent robots |
| Unintegrated and unfiltered data searches in cyberspace | Filtered information searches by multiple intelligent agents in cyberspace for very large data sources | Filtered and integrated responses to information queries in cyberspace for very large data sources |
| COMPUTING SYSTEMS | ||
| 100 GFLOP/ft3 for militarized HPC | 500 GFLOP/ft3 | TFLOP/ft3 |
| 10-20% efficiency on MPP | 50% overall efficiency on MPP | |
| Max 300 GFLOPs sustained | Scaleable designs to 10 TFLOPs | Scaleable designs to 100 TFLOPs |
| Baseline performance on ATR | 10x baseline on ATR | |
| SYSTEM DESIGN AND EVOLUTION | ||
| Cost, quality, and performance certification/assurance process for COTS or other reusable components | Minimum testing; hybrid approach to high-assurance states; predictable behavior | Continuous monitor performance/behavior; analysis and monitoring of assurance; cost of recertification proportional to system change |
| Real-time capability for dynamic languages | Cohesive dynamic language environment for application evolution | Life-cycle application of dynamic language technology |
| Minimal software design rationale capture across life cycle | Infrastructure for effective software life-cycle information capture and management | Reuse of design; transparent heterogeneous geographically distributed software life-cycle information access |
| Common architecture description language | Domain-specific development through specification process only | Generation of systems using behavior and architecture specifications; reuse of architecture components |
| Developed component by component with extensive use of COTS/GOTS | Domain-specific development through specification process only | Warfighter-modifiable systems in place |
Computing Systems. For the technologies involved with computing systems, the overall goals are to overcome the inevitable (and already present in some applications) limitations in computational throughput and the cost, power, size, and weight requirements for single or small numbers of networked computers. These requirements and limitations impact weapon systems, simulators, and engineering support systems. The technical challenges are to cut the costs and size of giga- and tera-floating point operation (FLOP) computers so that they fit into a weapons package, to make efficient use of parallel and massively parallel computing assets, and to design systems that will allow easier and low-cost transition to the future commercial advancements in both hardware and software to achieve truly architecture-independent, high-performance computing.
System Design and Evolution. With the explosive growth of new knowledge in almost all disciplines, new system designs are the order of the times in order to avoid technical obsolescence. This situation presents enormous challenges in the area of system design and evolution. The overall goal of this technology area is to reduce the time and cost of building, deploying, and evolving software-intensive systems while increasing the overall quality in terms such as residual errors, reusability, and integrity. A subgoal is to allow the warfighter to program the system needed for the specific battle environment. The technical challenges are to develop or automate techniques (1) for forward system engineering approaches and provide tools that have a systematic, holistic approach to design and information management across the system life cycle; and (2) for the activities associated with the reengineering and reverse engineering of legacy systems for modernization or reuse.
3.5.2.3 Related Federal and Private Sector Efforts. For information presentation and interaction, major related efforts include NASA work on human-computer interfaces for the Space Shuttle, the proposed NASA Space Station, and ground control workstations and private sector applications in the business domain. Private sector participants include Apple Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Xerox PARC, and AT&T Corporation. Universities having substantial research efforts in this area, funded through domestic and international customers, include Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Arizona. The university focus is almost solely on commercial applications of novel interface technologies, virtual reality, and intelligent user interfaces.
Machine intelligence R&D, while getting the majority of its funding from DoD, is augmented with programs from NASA, dealing with expert systems and intelligent controls; DOT, dealing with applications on land (intelligent highways) and air traffic control; and DOE, concentrating on control of industrial processes. The NSF supports a broad program of basic research in robotics and intelligent systems. In addition, there are a significant number of industrial firms that have IR&D projects studying related machine intelligence technology.
Computing systems represents a significant part of the U.S. program in high-performance computing and communications, which involves the Department of Education, NSA, DOE, EPA, NASA, NSF, NIST, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Most of the major vendors of high-performance computing systems, including the workstation manufacturers Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics, are building on the scaleable computing technology developed by the programs that are part of this subarea. Sun Microsystems' Java language is giving a strong boost to intelligent agents on networks. There are major technology efforts underway at industry/government-sponsored consortia, such as the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Consortium, often involving DoD sponsorship matched with significant industrial cost sharing. The TRP has also targeted some of this technology for dual-use development and defense conversion.
System design and evolution is an area of widespread national concern as well as one that offers great opportunities for introducing high-impact and affordable systems. DoD R&D organizations are addressing these challenges by working closely with the industrial sector. DARPA and RL are major sponsors of the Evolutionary Design of Complex software (EDCS) Program. Other affiliated organizations/minor sponsors include DoD Software Engineering Institute, U.S. Army, and NSF. The NSF has government-industry-university cooperative research centers, two examples of which are the Software Engineering Research Center collocated at Purdue University and the University of Florida; and the Center for Information Management Research, collocated at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona. The Software Productivity Consortium (SPC) in Herndon, VA, gets its basic funding from about 15 major companies with a strong interest in increasing their software productivity and from DoD. DoD laboratories and the SPC have agreements to share and expand on their successful software engineering products. By congressional action, the National Applied Software Engineering Center has been established, due in no small part to the efforts of the service laboratories and DARPA.
3.5.3.1 Technology Demonstrations. Information presentation and interaction is a supporting technology and, as such, has no current formal technology demonstrations. However, a technology demonstration (TD) for developing speech recognition for future DSPs in handheld com-puters was funded by the TRP and demonstrated a family of continuous speech recognition capabilities ranging from small vocabulary for command and control to a large vocabulary for dictation.
Machine intelligence has TDs in autonomous vehicles and image understanding architecture (IUA) vision and covers a technology demonstration that is key to the decision making IST subarea, namely USTRANSCOM planning tools. The USTRANSCOM planning tools demonstration is aimed at developing the next generation of generic AI planning, resource allocation, and scheduling technology. It is responsible for the capture of new AI planning capabilities in robust, application-ready software tools, and the demonstration of the feasibility of their application against employment and deployment crisis action planning tasks within the context of USTRANSCOM exercises.
The autonomous vehicles area focuses on ground vehicles for phase IV of a four-phased program. This phase will integrate a reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition subsystem with a multiple vehicle mission subsystem, resulting in the robust navigation of a team of four vehicles as a screening force in support of manned vehicles. The IUA vision demonstration is a TRP to develop and demonstrate important image understanding (IU) products by using and enhancing existing IU software technology and COTS hardware technology in a common architecture. The result will be an architecture that will allow IU capabilities in deployed systems to improve as rapidly as the technology is delivered.
The computing systems area has a large technology demonstration that provides many enabling technologies for the information management and distribution IST subarea as well as the business and combat missions of DoD. Information infrastructure services focus on the cyberspace areas of electronic transactions, information management, and transaction support services, including common authentication, authorization, and accounting services; resource registration and discovery; real-time multimedia interoperability; and adaptive computing services.
In the system design and evolution technology, the EDCS program will demonstrate the next generation of technologies, processes, and development environments beyond computer-aided software engineering (CASE) and knowledge-based engineering to address the unique requirements of large-scale, complex systems with long life cycles where missions and performance requirements tend to evolve over the life of the system. The objective is to scale-up the incremental development and prototyping paradigms as a means to increase effectiveness of systems and systematically reduce risks over the entire system life cycle. TDs will address (1) the evolution of a system implementation through effective information management and rational capture capabilities, (2) a knowledge-based environment in which all aspects of a system life cycle are formalized, (3) language support for evolutionary development of software components, (4) specification techniques for complex software architectures, (5) software systems with components written in multiple programming languages, and (6) experimental tools to support the refinement of software prototypes into production quality systems.
3.5.3.2 Technology Development. The information presentation and interaction aspect of this subarea requires advancements in many technologies to achieve the goals for optimizing human performance in the information-intensive combat environments of the present and future. Some needed advancements will be funded by the commercial sector, but in many cases, DoD must scale up the "game oriented developments" to real-world military applications. DoD must make continued investments in:
