Scientific
Applications:
NSF STEPS TOWARD A GRID-LIKE
CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces the first steps it is
taking
to develop a state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure likely to revolutionize the
conduct of science and engineering research and education. These steps
leverage the agency's recent investments in the Extensible Terascale Facility
and its six-year investments in the Partnerships for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure.
The Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF) will integrate terascale computing-
communication-information resources at five partner sites: the Argonne
National Lab, the Center for Advanced Computing Research at the California
Institute of Technology, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Pittsburgh
Supercomputer Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University
of California at San Diego. This year, NSF will add new partners to the ETF to
enhance the scientific utility of this distributed, heterogeneous grid
facility.
NSF plans include focused investments in both widely-shared
cyberinfrastructure hardware such as compute engines, large data stores,
visualization facilities and the like, and in the development of software
tools that will ensure grid interoperability. Essential software tools and
services will also provide researchers and educators nationwide with the
support needed to enhance the effectiveness of geographically distributed and
scientifically diverse cyberinfrastructure resources. NSF's plans include
increasing investments in the development of domain-specific
cyberinfrastructure software tools through the Information Technology Research
priority area.
Beginning in FY2005, the nation's science and engineering researchers and
educators will have access to the high-end, state-of-the-art computing-
communication-information resources and services resident in the ETF resource
partner sites, in one of the first demonstrations of a widely distributed
heterogeneous grid computing platform. NSF plans to support the management and
operations of these resources and services for a minimum of five years. To
maintain a cyberinfrastructure leadership position, the agency will
continuously balance the merits of upgrading existing resources and
capabilities against adding new resources and capabilities at existing or new
partner sites. The resulting widely distributed, shared cyberinfrastructure
will advance scientific discovery, learning and innovation in areas of
considerable consequence to society.
NSF's Peter Freeman notes, "Today's cyberinfrastructure capability exists
thanks in large measure to the successful community-building efforts of the
PACI partnerships. The expertise and products provided by the PACI community
have laid the grid computing groundwork and have led to advances in many areas
of science, including earthquake engineering, high energy physics,
bioinformatics and many others. We're deeply committed to building on the
contributions of the PACI communities to make the promise of
cyberinfrastructure a reality."
For more information, see:
www.cise.nsf.gov/news/cybr/cybr.htm
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