NSF awards $6.5 million to supercomputing subcenters

The National Science Foundation awarded $6.5 million to six supercomputing subcenters that will provide greater access to high-performance computing and communications (HPCC) tools. These centers form what are called Metacenter Regional Alliances (MRAs), which are agreements among existing supercomputing centers to increase availability and use of HPCC capabilities.

This project will benefit researchers in the academic community and the private work force by fostering a broader involvement in the emerging National Information Infrastructure and boosting the nation's ability to address business and scientific needs.

"These new awards will allow the technologies of High-Performance Computing, so long the focus of only nationally funded centers, to penetrate into local and regional activities," said Paul Young, assistant director of NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. "MRAs are akin to agricultural extension services for high-performance computing. For example, they will allow this technology to be used [to]...allow a new generation of students to acquire the skills that will be necessary for economic competitiveness in the 21st century."

The six recipients are:

* California Institute of Technology, Los Angeles Regional Gigabit Environment ($1.2 million): This alliance will provide high-speed computer network access for industrial partners and selected academic research groups in Southern California. It will focus on helping industrial partners access large-scale computing and communications facilities of the NSF Metacenter and Caltech. These industrial partners include users of high-performance computing systems and independent software vendors that develop application software for high-performance systems. Contact Robert O'Rourke at tel. 818-395-6225 or E-mail: robert_orourke@starbase1.caltech.edu.

* University of Illinois at Chicago, Augmenting and Complementing NII Metacenter Activities ($1.3 million): This alliance, known as the Virtual Reality Alliance, will bring together the NSF Metacenter, the Software Technologies Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Manufacturing Center. The metacenter will offer a high-end virtual reality test bed for manufacturing product design and rapid prototyping to large companies and a consortium of smaller ones. Partners also include Caterpillar, General Motors, the National Center for Supercomputng Applications and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Contact Rick Asa at tel. 312-996-8277 or E-mail: U63973@uicvm.uic.edu.

* MCNC, Stimulating and Enhancing Entrepreneurial Development ($1.4 million): This North Carolina alliance is designed to nurture the adoption of computational knowledge by small businesses. The center will focus on businesses in North Carolina in the first year, later expanding to include one additional state in the region for each of the next two years. The program is a partnership between MCNC's North Carolina Supercomputing Center, the Southern Technology Council (a division of the Southern Growth Policies Board), nine North Carolina small-business development organizations, IBM Corp., the Cornell Theory Center, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Contact Eileen Sarro at tel. 919-248-1827 or E-mail: eileen@mcnc.org.

* MCNC, Regional Training Center for Parallel Processing ($922,000): This center is being developed by the North Carolina Supercomputing Center at MCNC and North Carolina State University. Participating partners include the Cornell Theory Center and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications. With the increasing availability of parallel computers, the project will train scientists and students in the concepts of parallel processing by developing and distributing multimedia computer-based instruction. These materials will provide a self-paced-education environment covering all aspects of parallel processing. Contact Eileen Sarro at tel. 919-248-1827 or E-mail: eileen@mcnc.org.

* Ohio Supercomputer Center, Metacenter Alliance to Expand Industrial and Scientific Parallel Processing ($840,000): This alliance will allow the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and Ohio Supercomputer Center to focus on common issues associated with parallel processing on a Cray T3D computer. All three centers have similar hardware architectures and application software, allowing them to address common challenges in using new Massively Parallel Processing supercomputer systems. The alliance will concentrate on converting and developing key production-quality applications running on MPP and heterogeneous systems. Affordable and efficient tools in the fields of medical rendering, computational chemistry, scientific visualization and coal combustion will benefit industry and academic partners. Contact Cheryl Johnson at tel. 614- 292-6067 or E-mail: cjohnson@osc.edu.

* Rice University, Retooling the Supercomputing Community for Scalable Parallelism ($850,000): The Center for Research on Parallel Computation will collaborate with national, regional and state supercomputer centers to collect and further develop educational materials from the computational science research community on leading-edge parallel computing methods and technologies. These materials will be disseminated to supercomputer centers for use in short courses for users. The effort builds on the synergistic strengths of the center, a leading research institution on parallel computing, and the existing supercomputer centers, which have broad experience in educating end users. Contact Kevin Timson at tel. 713-285-5922 or E-mail: ktimson@cs.rice.edu.