NSF supercomputer center recompetition back on track

By Bill Gregory
Special to CRN

Just a day before the federal government furlough sequence began, a program announcement release was due for a major transition in computer science: the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure. This program is to recompete National Science Foundation contracts for four university supercomputer centers.

Much study and discussion had revolved around the question of whether to recompete, renew or extend the existing four centers, funded since 1985. Since then, other centers have sprung up. Last August a report by a committee headed by Edward Hayes, along with other reports, brought a decision for recompetition. The announcement was written and ready in December.

"It never made it out then," said Melvyn Ciment, deputy assistant director for the foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. "But it's back on track." Deadlines slipped only a couple of weeks.

"If we had slipped it the full month, it would have really run into major problems downstream," Ciment said. "People don't realize these things are written with a staging process." Announcements have to go out, and responses have to come back for inside-the-building and outside blue-ribbon-panel review. Then comes source selection and negotiation of complex contracts. The whole process takes about 12 months. In this program, the target is April 1997.

Inherent in the supercomputer recompetition is a plan for transition if a new center is selected. "A major supercomputer center has thousands of users," Ciment said. "Let's say we decide not to renew center X. We have to figure out a plan to migrate those users to some other system--a withdrawal plan. That can take several months by itself."

All this assumes that furloughs are over. Beyond that comes the more critical question of eventual budget levels, still very much up in the air.