National Computational Science Alliance

这一行动执行了美国国家科学基金会和伊利诺伊大学香槟分校(UIUC)的国家计算科学联盟(The Alliance)之间的合作协议，该协议由拉里·斯马尔博士通过美国国家科学基金会奖ASC 9619019指导。该合作协议的有效期为五年，是提交给NSF邀请函《先进计算基础设施伙伴关系》(PACI)的提案的结果，NSF 96-31。PACI计划建立在1985年建立的NSF超级计算机中心计划的基础上，并取代该计划。该计划专注于高性能计算和通信领域新出现的机会，提供灵活性，既能适应快速变化的环境，又能满足对高端计算的需求，以便使美国在计算科学和工程领域继续保持世界领先地位。通过这项计划，NSF将为研究人员提供使用高性能计算系统的途径，并配备相关的训练有素的工作人员和研究人员，以开发和优化它们的使用。可扩展的并行系统、高性能网络以及高带宽和大容量大容量存储系统的出现为国家基础设施创造了机会，这些基础设施由许多地理上分布的站点组成，这些站点强烈耦合到高端计算资源，并通过高速通信网络相互连接。国家超级计算应用中心与其合作伙伴共同创建了一个联盟，该联盟的主要任务是将许多计算、可视化和信息资源整合到一个全国性的“网格”中。网格将联盟联系在一起，并向国家科学研究界提供对其各种资源的访问。使用高性能网络，电网将把最高性能的系统连接到这些架构的中端版本，然后连接到最终用户的工作站，从而创建一个国家电网。联盟网格将互连数十个可视化和虚拟现实显示器、海量数据存储和远程仪器，而联盟开发的软件“胶水”将它们统一起来，以协作解决问题。该联盟还将为分布在网格上的信息和资源创建综合结构，使其内容对教育、培训和外联有用。将特别重视对任职人数偏低的少数群体、妇女和其他有关领域的宣传。伙伴关系成员之所以被选中，是因为他们各自承诺作为一个团队共同工作，使国家规模的多学科合作研究能够取得新的进展。该联盟将专注于提供先进的硬件、使能技术、应用技术方面的前沿工作、教育、培训和推广。这项奖励包括向UIUC及其合作伙伴支付98财年的第一笔增量付款，其中包括包括设备在内的一般运营费用。

This action executes a cooperative agreement between NSF and the National Computational Science Alliance (the Alliance) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), under the direction of Dr. Larry Smarr via NSF award ASC 9619019. The cooperative agreement will be operational for a period of five years and is the result of a proposal submitted to NSF solicitation, "Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure" (PACI), NSF 96-31. The PACI program builds on and replaces the NSF Supercomputer Centers Program established in 1985 The program focuses on newly emerging opportunities in high performance computing and communications, providing flexibility, both to adapt to rapidly evolving circumstances and to meet the need for high-end computation, in order to enable continued U.S. world leadership in computational science and engineering. NSF, through this program, will provide access for researchers to high performance computing systems, with associated highly trained staff and researchers necessary to develop and optimize their use. The emergence of scalable parallel systems, high performance networking and high bandwidth and large capacity mass storage systems creates the opportunity for a national infrastructure consisting of a number of geographically distributed sites strongly coupled to high end computational resources and to each other via high speed communications networks. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has joined with its partners to create an Alliance whose principal mission is the integration of the many computational, visualization and information resources into a national-scale "Grid". The Grid links the Alliance together and provides access to its wide variety of resources to the national scientific research community. Using high performance networking the Grid will link the highest performing systems to mid-range versions of these architectures, and then to the end-users' workstations, thereby creating a national Power-Grid. The Allia nce Grid will interconnect dozens of visualization and virtual reality displays, massive data stores, and remote instruments, while Alliance developed software "glue" unifies them for collaborative problem solving. The Alliance will also create integrating structures for information and resources distributed on the Grid, making its content useful for education, training and outreach. Special emphasis will be placed on outreach to underrepresented minorities, women and other pertinent areas. The partnership members have been chosen because of their individual commitments to work together as a team, enabling advances to be achieved by a new level of national-scale multidisciplinary collaborative research. The Alliance will concentrate on providing advanced hardware, enabling technology, leading edge work in application technology, education, training and outreach. Included in this award is the first incremental payment to UIUC and its partners for FY98 which covers general operating expenses including equipment.