National Computational Science Alliance

这项行动执行NSF与伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校（UIUC）的国家计算科学联盟（联盟）之间的合作协议，由Larry Smarr博士通过NSF奖项ASC 9619019指导。该合作协议将运行五年，是提交给NSF招标的提案的结果，“高级计算基础设施合作伙伴关系”（PACI），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，并取代了该计划，该计划专注于高性能计算和通信领域的新兴机会，提供灵活性，以适应快速发展的环境并满足高端计算的需求，以使美国在计算科学和工程领域继续保持世界领先地位。 NSF将通过该计划为研究人员提供高性能计算系统的访问权限，以及开发和优化其使用所需的相关训练有素的工作人员和研究人员。 可扩展的并行系统、高性能联网和高带宽以及大容量存储系统的出现为国家基础设施创造了机会，该国家基础设施由多个地理上分布的站点组成，这些站点通过高速通信网络与高端计算资源以及彼此强耦合。 国家超级计算应用中心与其合作伙伴一起创建了一个联盟，其主要使命是将许多计算、可视化和信息资源整合到一个全国规模的“网格”中。网格将联盟联系在一起，并向国家科研界提供其各种资源。使用高性能网络，网格将连接性能最高的系统到这些架构的中档版本，然后到最终用户的工作站，从而创建一个国家电网。Alliance nce Grid将连接数十个可视化和虚拟现实显示器、大量数据存储和远程仪器，而Alliance开发的软件“胶水”将它们统一起来，以协同解决问题。 联盟还将为在网格上分发的信息和资源建立综合结构，使其内容对教育、培训和外联有用。 将特别重视与代表性不足的少数民族、妇女和其他相关领域的外联工作。 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努力，使国家级多学科合作研究达到新的水平。 该联盟将集中力量提供先进的硬件、使能技术、应用技术方面的前沿工作、教育、培训和外联。 包括在这个奖项是第一个增量支付给UIUC及其合作伙伴为FY 98，其中包括一般业务费用，包括设备。

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.