Raining on the Innovation Parade

By Michael Feldman

August 11, 2011

Conventional wisdom informs us that innovation leads to society’s well-being by fostering things like economic growth and higher living standards. It’s pretty much accepted that technology advancements in industrialization, computers, medical technology, and business practices are the big drivers. Economists also claim that innovation drives a specific aspect of economic strength, called productivity.

Or at least it should. An article this week in Technology Review points out that at least one innovation measure is on the decline. Researchers have noticed that since the 1973, US productivity growth has started to flatten.

Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, at George Mason calls it the “The Great Stagnation,” which conveniently is the same title as the book he authored. Cowen and others use a measurement called total factor productivity (TFP), which according to Wikipedia ”accounts for effects in total output not caused by inputs.” Basically it’s a metric for how efficiently the economic inputs are utilized for production. The idea is that this reflects the rate of technological advancement, aka innovation.

The chart below tells the sad tale:

The graphic is from a recent report (PDF) compiled by The Hamilton Project that tries to make some sense of what’s happening to innovation in the US. I have several problems with the report, but most of it is centered on the linkage between this TFP metric and innovation.

Anecdotally, having lived through both the pre-70s and post-70s, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that innovation in the latter era has been a lot more impressive than in the former. And not just innovation, but the rate of innovation.

From post-WWII to the 70s, the biggest advancements were the establishment of personal transportation in the modern automobile and the spread of television as the dominant media. It allowed people and goods to be transported freely across the country — at least where the roads go — and enabled near universal access to entertainment and news from homes. Not bad.

But since the 70s we’ve seen the rise of personal and mobile computing, the internet, genetic sequencing (and molecular-based medicine, in general), as well as my favorite and yours, high performance computing. So today, nearly any type of information accumulated by society can be accessed and manipulated from anywhere. To me, that’s more impressive than a 56 Chevy and a 19-inch black and white.

It also should be pointed out that even useful innovation is often ignored. Obviously in that case, it can’t get reflected in productivity. This may be especially true when the rate of innovation is so high that it’s hard for people or businesses to know when to hop aboard.

Some sectors tend to adopt technology quicker than others. For example, manufacturing and biotech have not embraced HPC with nearly the enthusiasm of say, academia and government research. And on the more personal level, technologies like VoIP, (which, as a Skype user, I can attest is a tremendous productivity booster), has yet to be picked up en masse. The reasons for resisting new technologies can be financial, educational or cultural, but they certainly play a big part in adoption.

Then there’s just the more general question whether innovation can exist independently of an economy’s productivity. Some observers have noticed that the flattening of the TFP slope after 1973 coincides with the US government’s abandonment of Keynesian economic policy (run deficits when the private sector cut back, otherwise run surpluses). The implication here is that productivity is more likely to correlate to government spending habits.

On that note, it might be worthwhile to look at what the government is spending its money on. Certainly we’ve seen funding for defense and entitlements — two areas unlikely to contribute to much to either innovation or productivity — increase substantially in the past four decades. Meanwhile US investments in R&D as a percent of GDP dropped from 2.2 percent in 1964 to about 1 percent today. But that in itself is no guarantee, given that R&D spending was below 1 percent in the 1950s, when TFP was doing just dandy.

Then there’s the observant economist who noticed that the TFP for durable goods actually increased during the past four decades, compared to the pre-70s pace. At the same time, the TFP for non-durable goods, which includes the service sector, actually flattened out (it was never very steep to begin with). Since the service sector has grown disproportionally to the durable goods sector, the overall slope of the TFP has flattened.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t do better in the innovation arena. But I do see the problem more as one of adoption than any perceived decline in innovation itself. Again, HPC users could be viewed as a microcosm of the problem. The technology has a good track record for improving productivity, with enough case studies to choke a modest-sized library. Innovation here comes in many forms — accelerators (GPUs and FPGAs), architectures (clusters, SMP machines, and exotics), and software (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL, and so on). The array of choices is overwhelming to the HPC newbie. Here, as elsewhere, understanding the technology is going to be the key to productivity.

In any case, be wary of reports that claim innovation is in trouble. Economists have a propensity to forecast doom scenarios, which is why economics is often referred to as the dismal science. They also love to uncover correlations like this, since that is the lifeblood of their field. But understanding the interplay between technology, economics and society is a daunting task, filled with variables that, frankly, no one fully understands.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Kathy Yelick on Post-Exascale Challenges

April 18, 2024

With the exascale era underway, the HPC community is already turning its attention to zettascale computing, the next of the 1,000-fold performance leaps that have occurred about once a decade. With this in mind, the ISC Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Texas Two Step

April 18, 2024

Texas Tech University. Their middle name is ‘tech’, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been fielding not one, but two teams in the last three Winter Classic cluster competitions. Their teams, dubbed Matador and Red Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: The Return of Team Fayetteville

April 18, 2024

Hailing from Fayetteville, NC, Fayetteville State University stayed under the radar in their first Winter Classic competition in 2022. Solid students for sure, but not a lot of HPC experience. All good. They didn’t Read more…

Software Specialist Horizon Quantum to Build First-of-a-Kind Hardware Testbed

April 18, 2024

Horizon Quantum Computing, a Singapore-based quantum software start-up, announced today it would build its own testbed of quantum computers, starting with use of Rigetti’s Novera 9-qubit QPU. The approach by a quantum Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet Team Morehouse

April 17, 2024

Morehouse College? The university is well-known for their long list of illustrious graduates, the rigor of their academics, and the quality of the instruction. They were one of the first schools to sign up for the Winter Read more…

MLCommons Launches New AI Safety Benchmark Initiative

April 16, 2024

MLCommons, organizer of the popular MLPerf benchmarking exercises (training and inference), is starting a new effort to benchmark AI Safety, one of the most pressing needs and hurdles to widespread AI adoption. The sudde Read more…

Kathy Yelick on Post-Exascale Challenges

April 18, 2024

With the exascale era underway, the HPC community is already turning its attention to zettascale computing, the next of the 1,000-fold performance leaps that ha Read more…

Software Specialist Horizon Quantum to Build First-of-a-Kind Hardware Testbed

April 18, 2024

Horizon Quantum Computing, a Singapore-based quantum software start-up, announced today it would build its own testbed of quantum computers, starting with use o Read more…

MLCommons Launches New AI Safety Benchmark Initiative

April 16, 2024

MLCommons, organizer of the popular MLPerf benchmarking exercises (training and inference), is starting a new effort to benchmark AI Safety, one of the most pre Read more…

Exciting Updates From Stanford HAI’s Seventh Annual AI Index Report

April 15, 2024

As the AI revolution marches on, it is vital to continually reassess how this technology is reshaping our world. To that end, researchers at Stanford’s Instit Read more…

Intel’s Vision Advantage: Chips Are Available Off-the-Shelf

April 11, 2024

The chip market is facing a crisis: chip development is now concentrated in the hands of the few. A confluence of events this week reminded us how few chips Read more…

The VC View: Quantonation’s Deep Dive into Funding Quantum Start-ups

April 11, 2024

Yesterday Quantonation — which promotes itself as a one-of-a-kind venture capital (VC) company specializing in quantum science and deep physics  — announce Read more…

Nvidia’s GTC Is the New Intel IDF

April 9, 2024

After many years, Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was back in person and has become the conference for those who care about semiconductors and AI. I Read more…

Google Announces Homegrown ARM-based CPUs 

April 9, 2024

Google sprang a surprise at the ongoing Google Next Cloud conference by introducing its own ARM-based CPU called Axion, which will be offered to customers in it Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Eyes on the Quantum Prize – D-Wave Says its Time is Now

January 30, 2024

Early quantum computing pioneer D-Wave again asserted – that at least for D-Wave – the commercial quantum era has begun. Speaking at its first in-person Ana Read more…

GenAI Having Major Impact on Data Culture, Survey Says

February 21, 2024

While 2023 was the year of GenAI, the adoption rates for GenAI did not match expectations. Most organizations are continuing to invest in GenAI but are yet to Read more…

The GenAI Datacenter Squeeze Is Here

February 1, 2024

The immediate effect of the GenAI GPU Squeeze was to reduce availability, either direct purchase or cloud access, increase cost, and push demand through the roof. A secondary issue has been developing over the last several years. Even though your organization secured several racks... Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire