Title 42The Public Health and WelfareRelease 119-73not60

§18642 Advanced Scientific Computing Research

Title 42 › Chapter 161— DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY RESEARCH AND INNOVATION › Subchapter III— DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY OFFICE OF SCIENCE POLICY › § 18642

Last updated Apr 5, 2026|Official source

Summary

Creates a program run by the Director, working with universities and public and private partners, to fund research, development, and demos in applied math, computational science, and computer science that help the Department’s missions and U.S. competitiveness. It must develop modeling, simulation, and other computational tools for science and new technologies, improve computing and networking for data-driven discovery, and build advanced scientific computing hardware and software. The Director and Secretary must support high-performance computing and networking for energy research and coordinate across the Department and other federal agencies to meet computational and facility needs. The program must fund math, statistics, and algorithms for complex modeling, plus tools, languages, and programming environments for high-end computing, and keep a balanced portfolio of foundational research and high-performance hardware and facilities. Congress says the Exascale Computing Project created a shared software ecosystem that must be kept and improved, and the Secretary must work to maintain and evolve that software stack. The Secretary must run a program to aim for computing beyond exascale. That program must keep foundational research in new computing architectures (for example AI, quantum, edge, extreme heterogeneity), preserve key Exascale practices and software, and make a Department-wide plan for balancing on-site and cloud computing and data management. Not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022, the Secretary must report on that strategy to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate. The Secretary must issue guidance to avoid harmful algorithmic bias when using machine learning and AI. The Department must also research heterogeneous and reconfigurable systems and coordinate that work with Basic Energy Sciences. The Secretary must support energy-efficient computing and data center R&D, create a National Laboratory–industry–university partnership chosen by competitive merit review, develop energy-saving hardware and software, consider many architectures, and give competitive access to the resulting resources; a report on these activities and management is due not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022 to the same committees. The Secretary must upgrade the Energy Sciences Network to provide high bandwidth across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean, ensure reliability, protect against cyberattacks, move exponentially growing data from labs and sensors, and help integrate heterogeneous computing systems. The Secretary must support the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship with these authorizations: $15,750,000 for fiscal year 2023; $16,537,500 for fiscal year 2024; $17,364,375 for fiscal year 2025; $18,232,594 for fiscal year 2026; and $19,144,223 for fiscal year 2027. Out of Office of Science funds, the following are authorized for these activities: $1,126,950,000 for fiscal year 2023; $1,194,109,500 for fiscal year 2024; $1,265,275,695 for fiscal year 2025; $1,340,687,843 for fiscal year 2026; and $1,420,599,500 for fiscal year 2027.

Full Legal Text

Title 42, §18642

The Public Health and Welfare — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)As part of the activities authorized under section 7139 of this title, the Director shall carry out, in coordination with academia and relevant public and private sector entities, a research, development, and demonstration program—
(1)to steward applied mathematics, computational science, and computer science research relevant to the missions of the Department and the competitiveness of the United States;
(2)to develop modeling, simulation, and other computational tools relevant to other scientific disciplines and to the development of new energy technologies and other technologies;
(3)to advance computing and networking capabilities for data-driven discovery; and
(4)to develop advanced scientific computing hardware and software tools for science and engineering.
(b)
(c)(1)The Director shall support research in high-performance computing and networking relevant to energy applications, including modeling, simulation, and advanced data analytics for basic and applied energy research programs carried out by the Secretary.
(2)The Under Secretary for Science shall ensure the coordination of the activities of the Department, including activities under this section, to determine and meet the computational and networking research and facility needs of the Office of Science and all other relevant energy technology and energy efficiency programs within the Department and with other Federal agencies as appropriate.
(d)(1)The Director shall carry out activities to develop, test, and support—
(A)mathematics, statistics, and algorithms for modeling complex systems relevant to the missions of the Department, including on advanced computing architectures; and
(B)tools, languages, programming environments, and operations for high-end computing systems (as defined in section 5541 of title 15).
(2)(A)The Director shall maintain a balanced portfolio within the advanced scientific computing research and development program established under section 976 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (42 U.S.C. 16316) 11 See References in Text note below. that supports robust investment in—
(i)applied mathematical, computational, and computer sciences research needs relevant to the mission of the Department, including foundational areas that are critical to the advancement of energy sciences and technologies and new and emerging computing technologies; and
(ii)associated high-performance computing hardware and facilities.
(B)(i)It is the sense of Congress that the Exascale Computing Project has successfully created a broad ecosystem that provides shared software packages, novel evaluation systems, and applications relevant to the science and engineering requirements of the Department, and that such products must be maintained and improved in order that the full potential of the deployed systems can be continuously realized.
(ii)The Secretary shall seek to sustain and evolve the ecosystem described in clause (i) to ensure that the exascale software stack and other research software will continue to be maintained, hardened, and otherwise optimized for long-term use on exascale systems and beyond and reliable availability to the user community.
(e)(1)The Secretary shall establish a program to develop and implement a strategy for achieving computing systems with capabilities beyond exascale computing systems. In establishing this program, the Secretary shall—
(A)maintain foundational research programs in mathematical, computational, and computer sciences focused on new and emerging computing needs within the mission of the Department, including post-Moore’s law computing architectures, novel approaches to modeling and simulation, artificial intelligence and scientific machine learning, quantum computing, edge computing, extreme heterogeneity, including potential quantum accelerators, and distributed high-performance computing;
(B)retain best practices and maintain support for essential hardware, applications, and software elements of the Exascale Computing Program that are necessary for sustaining the vitality of a long-term capable software ecosystem for exascale and beyond; and
(C)develop a Department-wide strategy for balancing on-premises and cloud-based computing and scientific data management.
(2)Not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022, the Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate a report on the development and implementation of the strategy described in paragraph (1).
(f)In leveraging high-performance computing systems for research purposes, including through the use of machine learning algorithms for data analysis and artificial intelligence, the Secretary shall issue, and ensure adherence to, guidance for the Department, the National Laboratories, and users as to how those capabilities should be employed in a manner that mitigates and, to the maximum extent practicable, avoids harmful algorithmic bias.
(g)(1)The Secretary shall carry out a program of research and development in heterogeneous and reconfigurable computing systems to expand understanding of the potential for heterogeneous and reconfigurable computing systems to deliver high performance, high efficiency computing for Department mission challenges. The program shall include research and development that explores the convergence of big data analytics, simulations, and artificial intelligence to drive the design of heterogeneous computing system architectures.
(2)In carrying out the program described in paragraph (1), the Secretary shall ensure coordination between research activities undertaken by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program and materials research supported by the Basic Energy Sciences program within the Office of Science.
(h)(1)The Secretary shall support a program of fundamental research, development, and demonstration of energy efficient computing and data center technologies relevant to advanced computing applications, including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and scientific machine learning.
(2)(A)In carrying out the program under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall—
(i)establish a partnership for National Laboratories, industry partners, and institutions of higher education for codesign of energy efficient hardware, technology, software, and applications across all applicable program offices of the Department, and provide access to energy efficient computing resources to such partners;
(ii)develop hardware and software technologies that decrease the energy needs of advanced computing practices, including through data center codesign;
(iii)consider multiple heterogeneous computing architectures in collaboration with the program established under subsection (g), including neuromorphic computing, persistent computing, and ultrafast networking; and
(iv)provide, as appropriate, on a competitive, merit-reviewed basis, access for researchers from institutions of higher education, National Laboratories, industry, and other Federal agencies to the energy efficient computing technologies developed pursuant to clause (i).
(B)In selecting participants for the partnership established under subparagraph (A)(i), the Secretary shall select participants through a competitive, merit review process.
(C)Not later than 1 year after August 9, 2022, the Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate a report on—
(i)the activities conducted under subparagraph (A); and
(ii)the coordination and management of the program under subparagraph (A) to ensure an integrated research program across the Department.
(i)(1)The Secretary shall provide for upgrades to the Energy Sciences Network user facility in order to meet the research needs of the Department for highly reliable data transport capabilities optimized for the requirements of large-scale science.
(2)In carrying out paragraph (1), the Secretary shall ensure the following capabilities:
(A)To provide high bandwidth scientific networking across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean.
(B)To ensure network reliability.
(C)To protect the network infrastructure from cyberattacks.
(D)To manage transport of exponentially increasing levels of data from the Department’s National Laboratories and sites, user facilities, experiments, and sensors.
(E)To contribute to the integration of heterogeneous computing frameworks and systems.
(j)(1)The Secretary shall support the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship program in order to facilitate collaboration between graduate students and researchers at the National Laboratories, and contribute to the development of a diverse and inclusive computational workforce to help advance research in all areas of computational science relevant to the mission of the Department, including quantum computing.
(2)Of the funds authorized to be appropriated for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program, there are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary for carrying out activities under this subsection—
(A)$15,750,000 for fiscal year 2023;
(B)$16,537,500 for fiscal year 2024;
(C)$17,364,375 for fiscal year 2025;
(D)$18,232,594 for fiscal year 2026; and
(E)$19,144,223 for fiscal year 2027.
(k)Out of funds authorized to be appropriated for the Office of Science in a fiscal year, there are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary to carry out the activities described in this section—
(1)$1,126,950,000 for fiscal year 2023;
(2)$1,194,109,500 for fiscal year 2024;
(3)$1,265,275,695 for fiscal year 2025;
(4)$1,340,687,843 for fiscal year 2026; and
(5)$1,420,599,500 for fiscal year 2027.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

References in Text

section 976 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, referred to in subsec. (d)(2)(A), enacted section 16316 of this title and amended section 5523 of Title 15, Commerce and Trade. Codification Section is comprised of section 304 of Pub. L. 115–246. Subsec. (b) of section 304 of Pub. L. 115–246 amended section 16316 of this title, section 5541 and 5542 of Title 15, Commerce and Trade, and provisions set out as a note under section 5501 of Title 15.

Amendments

2022—Subsecs. (a), (b). Pub. L. 117–167, § 10104(a)(1), (2), added subsec. (a) and redesignated former subsec. (a) as (b). Former subsec. (b) redesignated (c). Subsec. (c). Pub. L. 117–167, § 10104(a)(1), (3), redesignated subsec. (b) as (c), designated existing provisions par. (1) and inserted heading, and added par. (2). Former subsec. (c) redesignated (d). Subsec. (d). Pub. L. 117–167, § 10104(a)(1), (4), redesignated subsec. (c) as (d) and amended it generally. Prior to amendment, text read as follows: “The Director shall carry out activities to develop, test, and support— “(1) mathematics, models, and algorithms for complex systems and programming environments; and “(2) tools, languages, and operating systems for high-end computing systems (as defined in section 5541 of title 15).” Subsecs. (e) to (k). Pub. L. 117–167, § 10104(a)(5), added subsecs. (e) to (k).

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

42 U.S.C. § 18642

Title 42The Public Health and Welfare

Last Updated

Apr 5, 2026

Release point: 119-73not60