October 28, 2003
The National Science Foundation (NSF) continues to take steps toward
deploying an enhanced cyberinfrastructure for science and engineering
research and education. These steps build on the results of FY 2003
competitions, and draw upon input from the academic community and NSF’s
programmatic directorates and offices, as well as recommendations from
the report of the NSF Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure.
During FY 2003, NSF announced awards that bring new scientific capability
at four new partner sites to the Extensible Terascale Facility, expanded
the NSF Middleware Initiative’s efforts in testing, portals and instrumentation,
and established eleven testbeds to advance next-generation networking
capabilities. The agency’s Information Technology Research (ITR) priority
area also yielded eight new large-scale projects, most targeting IT
research in a range of scientific fields that will inform the future
development of cyberinfrastructure.
During the past summer, NSF solicited advice and input from the academic
community through two workshops and a town hall meeting to discuss management
and models for cyberinfrastructure. Internally, the agency convened
a Cyberinfrastructure Working Group to explore challenges and opportunities
in all science and engineering fields. With guidance from these and
other sources, NSF has outlined the following steps in the ongoing transition.
As previously announced, the Partnerships for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure (PACI) have been extended through the end of FY 2004.
During this period, both PACI lead sites - the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) will
deploy significant technology upgrades, almost doubling the high-end
computing resources that NSF makes available to the nation’s scientists
and engineers. NSF plans include revised agreements with NCSA and SDSC
to ensure the continuing provision of high-end computing resources and
related services to the national community through the end of FY 2007.
In addition, SDSC and NCSA will work in partnership with NSF and the
science and engineering community at large to define emerging cyberinfrastructure
opportunities to advance all fields. These and other community activities
will inform NSF's development of future cyberinfrastructure-enhancing
competitions.
Complementing the cyberinfrastructure resources and services provided
by NCSA and SDSC, the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF) - which is
on track to be commissioned October 1, 2004 - will demonstrate the potential
of revolutionary grid computing approaches to advance science and engineering
research and education. Additional ETF upgrades are being planned for
FY 2004, where plans include new capability computing for the Terascale
Computing System at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). This
represents the final stage of the ETF’s construction phase. Support
for the management and operations of ETF-enabled cyberinfrastructure
will be provided beginning in FY 2005 and extending through FY 2009.
To ensure that all science and engineering communities are prepared
to inform the development of and effectively utilize the broad, evolving
cyberinfrastructure, NSF plans to hold an open competition during FY
2004 that will ultimately support a comprehensive set of education,
training and outreach awards. This competition will build on the work
of the successful PACI Education, Outreach and Training (EOT) and other
activities.
NSF’s goal is to ensure the development of a national cyberinfrastructure
that is second to none. The resulting widely distributed, shared cyberinfrastructure
will advance discovery, learning and innovation across the science and
engineering enterprise.
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