Fresh start for NSF supercomputer centers.

After a lengthy review, the National Science Foundation has decided to scrap its present supercomputer centers program. In its place, the agency last week introduced an initiative that focuses on taking advantage of newly emerging computer technology and on broadening participation in computational science and engineering.

"Advanced scientific computing in this country has been an enormously successful enterprise," says Neal F. Lane, director of NSF. However, "the field has evolved and matured. It's a much richer scene now than it was at the time the program started [10 years ago]."

At present, NSF funds four supercomputer centers. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of California, San Diego, these facilities were initially geared toward testing the power and utility of supercomputers for scientific purposes (SN: 3/2/85, p.135). Over the years, the four centers added a variety of specialized computers and software to handle the output from their supercomputers, and they began to work together in joint efforts (SN: 11/28/92, p.374).

Meanwhile, a number of universities, government laboratories, and other institutions developed their own high-performance computing centers. To tackle a variety of research questions, these groups often relied not on multipurpose supercomputers but on networks of desktop workstations and other computers (SN: 5/1/93, p.280).

Such changes in the computing landscape prompted NSF to take a close look at its centers. In September, a task force headed by Edward F. Hayes of Ohio State University in Columbus recommended that NSF stage a new competition to select sites for high-performance computing centers.

The task force called for broadly based partnerships linking well-equipped "leading-edge" sites to experimental facilities at universities, specialized research centers, and regional computing operations.

"These recommendations are designed to set the centers program on a new course that builds on its past successes yet shifts the focus to the present realities of high-performance computing and communications and provides flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances," the task force concluded.

The task force report became the basis for NSF's "Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure" initiative. The agency expects most of the proposals to come from universities, but the partnerships may include state-supported computing centers, private organizations, and the national laboratories.

Whether any of the present supercomputer centers closes down will depend on the results of the competition, says Paul Young, head of NSF's computer and information science and engineering directorate. Given budget constraints, the total number of funded centers is unlikely to increase and may actually decrease, he adds.

NSF has posted its advanced computing initiative and the task force report on the World Wide Web at http://www.cise.nsf.gov/.