NO ONE is entirely certain why the United States government chose to locate its newest supercomputer centre slap-bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, among the pineapple and sugar cane plantations on the Hawaiian island of Maui. There is a military rationale, in the shape of the US Air Force space surveillance station on the summit of Mount Haleakala, the 3055-metre volcano that dominates the island. And the $34 million centre 鈥� one of only six in the US 鈥� could owe its exotic location to Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye鈥檚 spell as chairman of the US Senate鈥檚 communications subcommittee.
But regardless of how it came to be there, for Hawaiians, the Maui High Performance Computing Center has tremendous symbolic value. The inhabitants of the world鈥檚 most isolated archipelago see the centre as the embodiment of a new global paradigm, in which state-of-the-art telecommunications technology makes geographical location irrelevant. For the computing centre is connected to the Internet via a T3 transoceanic fibre-optic cable that can transmit 45 million bits of data per second. This one cable gives little Hawaii more bandwidth than all the Internet connections between the East Coast of the US and Europe put together. Paradise is well and truly wired.
Maui鈥檚 massively parallel IBM SP2 machine can perform 106 gigaflops per second. Since the centre opened in August 1994, the Air Force has been using half of this capacity to unblur images of satellites captured by optical telescopes on the top of Mount Haleakala. The remainder of the machine鈥檚 gigantic computing power is available for commercial purposes. But what applications are there for supercomputers in Maui?
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The pineapple and sugar industry can鈥檛 really use computing power, nor can Maui鈥檚 other famous industries 鈥� surf, sunshine and honeymoon hotels. But its community of artists and designers are waking up to the idea that the supercomputer and its fibre-optic link could make it possible to live and work in paradise. Jore Park and Wylci Fables, two techno-literate artists who live up on the foothills of Mount Haleakala, have come up with a new supercomputer application, one which had apparently not occurred either to IBM or the centre 鈥� remote rendering of digital animation.
Park and Fables know that the computer animation business is taking off around the world and that immense computing power is needed to take artists鈥� raw computer-generated images and turn them into properly lit, realistically textured scenes. This process, called rendering, can tie up a small workstation for weeks at a time. So they figured that access to a remote rendering service ought to be especially attractive to medium and small animation houses, because it would free their precious in-house computer resources for more creative tasks. The company they formed, called SeaSeer, provides just such a service to computer animators around the world.
The potential for Hawaii to develop a cottage digital animation industry excites the supercomputer centre鈥檚 marketing manager, Burt Lum. Hawaii has to be able to 鈥渁nchor information resources鈥�, Lum believes, 鈥渁nd the centre is one of the ways of doing that鈥�. SeaSeer is already involved in half a dozen animation projects, although it is too soon to say whether its example will inspire the many other graphic artists who live in the islands.
Hawaiian politicians have long touted the idea of the islands becoming a high-tech hub for the Pacific. On top of Hawaii鈥檚 natural advantages, such as famous beaches and an idyllic climate, the state boasts a multicultural population around half of which is of Asian origin. Agriculture is finding it hard to compete with low-wage countries like the Philippines, and the military are cutting back at the massive Pearl Harbor base. Tourism continues to grow but most of the jobs it provides are low-paid. So information technology looks more than ever the best bet for future growth.
Hawaii now boasts more optical fibre per capita than any other US state. Fibre links installed by the local phone company connect the six main islands in the archipelago. A second inter-island fibre network that will double the existing capacity is currently being laid by the Canadian firm GST Telecommunications. Meanwhile on Oahu, the island on which three-quarters of Hawaii鈥檚 1.2 million people live, Oceanic Cable, a subsidiary of Time Warner, is deploying fibre along major thoroughfares to provide cable television services. Then there is the MHPCC鈥檚 T3 line to the mainland. With all this connectivity allied to the Internet and its multimedia overlay, the World Wide Web, Hawaii can at last transcend its geographic isolation.
Frank Fukunaga, one of the directors of Hawaii鈥檚 High Technology Development Corporation, points to the difference this makes. 鈥淚n the late 1970s,鈥� he recalls, 鈥渋t was impossible to do high-tech here, especially if you had to market out-of-state.鈥� Fukunaga ran a software business but found himself forced to move to California to make it a success. Now he has sold his company and come back, 鈥渕indboggled鈥� to discover how much Hawaii has changed. 鈥淲e can use the Internet to market our products,鈥� Fukunaga enthuses. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have to worry about distributors any more.鈥�
One company set up to do just that is Honolulu-based Universal Resource Locator. Its first product is a Web-based global head hunting service. In its database, the company hopes eventually to store thousands of CVs, so that a company based in Sweden, for example, would be able to locate a Mandarin-speaking engineer to work on a telecoms project in China. 鈥淥ur fondest dream has been [for Hawaii] to be a business bridge across the East-West cultural gap,鈥� says URL president Larry Cross. 鈥淏ut despite the promise, no one actually realised it.鈥�
One person who can claim to have built bridges 鈥� even united the whole Pacific rim 鈥� is Torben Nielsen, a maverick Danish computer scientist who arrived at the University of Hawaii in 1985. Nielsen needed e-mail to finish his dissertation, but in those days the school did not have a network, and the authorities saw no urgent need to build one. So, like Internet pioneers everywhere, Nielsen enlisted a few like-minded colleagues, and they rolled up their sleeves and started pulling cable.
Across the Pacific
Pretty soon, they had wired the university and connected it to the mainland by piggybacking on a US Navy satellite link. Nielsen then decided that it would be fun to hook up the rest of the Pacific too. By the time he had finished in 1990, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand could all use satellite links to connect to the Internet via the University of Hawaii. 鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 any grand plan,鈥� he recalls matter-of-factly, 鈥渋t just seemed like a good thing to do at the time.鈥�
The next challenge for Nielsen and friends was to see whether they could send large volumes of data over the Internet, something which many people were then still saying was impossible. Information from meteorological satellites seemed a good choice; researchers around the world can put it to good use, but it is often hard to obtain without penetrating layers of bureaucracy at national weather agencies. So the researchers built themselves a low-cost receiving station and started pulling down data from satellites like GMS V, and placing what they got on the university鈥檚 file servers. From there it was made available free to anyone who wanted to download it. This has proved to be a very popular service: every day around 5000 people dip into the 175 gigabytes of regularly updated data that reside on Nielsen鈥檚 discs. Among the users are the meteorological services of several European countries, and astronomers who want to forecast when the skies over their telescopes will be clear.
Now that this system is up and running, Nielsen wants to go one step further and liberate the data from remote sensing satellites. These typically operate at much higher data rates than their meteorological cousins. And since they are polar orbiters, you need receivers that can track them as they move across the heavens.
Conventional tracking receivers can cost up to $10 million, way beyond the means of most universities. So Nielsen has formed a company, Apogee Solutions, which will build receiving stations and sell them for about $500 000 鈥� and still make a profit, he hopes. The trick is in improving the software so that the hardware 鈥� the most expensive part of the receiver -can be simplified. The new receivers will allow universities to receive data previously inaccessible to them.
鈥淲e are hoping to get a global network built within the next few years,鈥� Nielsen says. He expects the network to provide 鈥渘ear real-time global coverage for environmental studies鈥�. To receive this data 鈥� guaranteed free from bureaucratic interference 鈥� you will need no more than an Internet link and a large hard disc. While Nielsen builds his global network with Hawaii at the centre, two of his university colleagues are focusing on a specific project aiming to spread networking skills to a generation of Hawaiian schoolchildren. David Lassner and Philip Bossert from the University of Hawaii鈥檚 Information Technology Services have set up the Hawaii Education & Research Network (HERN), a high-speed statewide link which connects all Hawaii鈥檚 242 public schools and colleges to one another and the Internet.
This project has been made possible because the state government was prepared to take a stand last year when Oceanic Cable 鈥� which is by far the largest cable TV company in Hawaii 鈥� applied to renew its franchise. As a condition of renewal, the company had to agree to deliver fibre-optic cable to all schools at cost.
This summer, Lassner and Bossert hosted a two-week workshop in Honolulu for 200 teachers and faculty to spread the networking skills. They hope to set Hawaii on the road to becoming a major producer of multimedia content and online services. 鈥淚f we can crank out a generation of kids that know this stuff,鈥� Lassner says, 鈥渢hat could really make a difference.鈥�
Hawaiians are better placed than most to learn. As the state is made up of a long string of islands, some with small populations, people have already had to adapt to the techniques of distance learning, using televised lessons to share scarce resources such as teachers of calculus, for example. Now the Web promises to add interactivity.
Inspired by the HERN project Oceanic decided it should also experiment with new services in Hawaii. The company is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, which has been running a trial of cable-based interactive consumer services in Orlando, Florida. Films, shopping services and other information services are piped to ordinary television sets via 鈥渟et-top boxes鈥�. So far, the trial has not been a great success (see 鈥淭V鈥檚 loose connections鈥�, 快猫短视频, 1 April).
According to Michael Meyer, director of ancillary services at Oceanic, one of the lessons from the Florida experiment is that it is difficult and expensive to turn a dumb appliance like a TV into an intelligent terminal. Personal computers are a more sensible platform from which to launch interactive services, he says. 鈥淓verything is about to change,鈥� predicts Meyer 鈥渁nd the vehicle will be the World Wide Web.鈥�
Hawaii, where over 30 per cent of homes have PCs, is an obvious place to test new interactive, Web-based services. 鈥淓verybody鈥檚 trying to do this,鈥� Meyer says, 鈥渂ut the missing link is the local high-speed network.鈥� Hawaii is the exception 鈥� it has such a network 鈥� and so could well be the first to turn the World Wide Web into a medium for entertainment as well as information. After all the hype about the information superhighway, 鈥渨e鈥檙e saying, 鈥楲et鈥檚 make this real鈥�,鈥� Meyer says. A first in melding computers, entertainment, communications and the Web would certainly boost the Hawaiian dream of becoming the electronic centre of the Pacific.
At Oceanic鈥檚 development centre at the Mililani Technology Park just outside Honolulu, the company is testing the first consignment of ultra high-speed modems which are capable of communications at speeds of between 5 and 7 megahertz 鈥� an order of magnitude faster than the fastest conventional modems. Next to them a computer monitor screen shows a menu of local services that will be available from the Web, including television and films. By the time this service rolls out to homes next year, Meyer hopes to have signed up banks, insurance companies, major retailers and shopping centres to provide new home services.
Virtual business
Selling information and entertainment is only one of the commercial opportunities opened up by high-bandwidth links. Other companies are using them to radically reorganise their existing businesses. Close to Oceanic鈥檚 headquarters in Mililani Technology Park is a development centre operated by VeriFone, an outstanding example of a 鈥渧irtual corporation鈥�. It is using the new links to share work between centres in different time zones, so allowing it to operate round the clock and get products to market more quickly. VeriFone鈥檚 most familiar products are the little swipe boxes which sales assistants use to check credit card details.
VeriFone鈥檚 centres are spaced around the globe and tied together by e-mail. So the design of an urgently required printed circuit board, for example, can begin at the company鈥檚 Taipei centre, be transferred to Bangalore at the end of the day, go from Bangalore to Paris, then to Florida or California, finally ending up in Mililani.
A company with a virtual organisational structure can set up shop anywhere in the world where the requisite skills are available. So did VeriFone choose Hawaii because talented engineers would rather live in beautiful surroundings than some smoggy, overcrowded city on the mainland? Actually, the answer is no: VeriFone is in Hawaii simply because that is where the company was founded in 1981. But there is nothing to stop other 鈥渧irtual corporations鈥� setting up in Hawaii to take advantage of its communications and lifestyle 鈥�
Well, almost nothing. The one predictable problem of living in paradise is that too many people want to be there. Housing in Hawaii is expensive, especially on Oahu, where Honolulu and the resort of Waikiki are. Overall, the cost of living is one-third higher than in mainland US. So if Hawaii is to have a place in the new global paradigm, it is likely to be an exclusive one. Living and working in paradise may be a option open only to the very talented and extremely skilled. (see Map)
