This paper is in two parts: (a) a reprise the three-decade history of NSF’s investments in academic supercomputing and communications and (b) a brief look ahead to new developments in the fields of computational S&E and smart control using supercomputers, smart sensors, and high-speed communications. The history starts with the Peter Lax Report, the initial NSF investment in supercomputing centers in 1985, and the provisioning of the NSFnet to build alliance networks between the supercomputing centers and university science and engineering communities at large. Over the three decades supercomputer throughput rates have increased dramatically from 100s of MFLOPs in 1985 to tens of PFLOPS today, making U.S. universities pre-eminent in the world in computational S&E, which is a tribute to both NSF and Centers’ dedication and leadership. Looking ahead to the impacts of synaptic computing, high-performance computing coupled with data analysis, and cloud computing coupled with the Internet of Things (IOT), the challenges and opportunities in computational S&E in all sectors of U.S. Society is projected to advance dramatically.
