Licensing costs of modeling and simulation software, which often charge by CPU, can quickly get "completely out of control," said Riley. The costs could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which "is just not practical when you are only using the tools sporadically," he added.

Although industry groups and White House officials have cited the development of advanced manufacturing tools as a national priority, Riley said the funding is lagging as well as efforts to educate manufacturers about the benefits of advanced techniques.

Riley isn't knocking the high-speed gigabit effort and said faster transmission rates will help. "I think it's needed," said Riley, "but from where I stand it would be secondary."

Steve Conway, a high-performance computing (HPC) analyst at IDC, however, believes that more gigabit networks can give a "tremendous boost" to manufacturing, particularly as U.S. companies compete with low wage nations.

Tier one manufacturers are already using HPC system to design and test products but their supply chains are not. "This could be very helpful," he said, of gigabit networks.