Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site noscvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!noscvax!cunningh From: cunningh@noscvax.UUCP (Robert P. Cunningham) Newsgroups: net.rumor Subject: supercomputer consortia status Message-ID: <731@noscvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 25-Dec-84 03:41:37 EST Article-I.D.: noscvax.731 Posted: Tue Dec 25 03:41:37 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 27-Dec-84 02:40:45 EST Distribution: net Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center Lines: 83 [abstracted from Datamation, Dec 1 issue] Some 22 groups have applied for a piece of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) $18 million worth of initial funding in their Advanced Scientific Computing Centers program. Most are consortiums of different universities around the U.S. According to Datamation, the 22 proposals have been trimmed to six or eight, and will be trimmed to three in February. The winning supercomputer centers are scheduled to begin operations on 1 July 1985, and continue under NSF funding for five years. The NSF hopes to open 10 centers by 1990. Although the identities of the leading groups are officially secret, Datamation mentions as favorites: the Consortium of Scientific Computing, consisting of 12 mostly-eastern universities. the University of Illinois. the West Consortium lead by General Atomic Inc., and including U. of Wisconsin, U.C. San Diego, UCLA, Stanford, CalTech, U. of Hawaii and others. a combination of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. And a second tier of contenders including: Cornell University. a Washington consortium consisting of Boeing, U. of Washington and George Washington University. a Houston Area Research Consortium. U. of Minnesota. Purdue University. U. of Michigan. a consortium of Carnegie-Mellon University & Westinghouse. The purpose of NSF's program is to significantly increase access to supercomputers by researchers, as outlined by the 1982 study of the Lax Panel on Large Scale Computing in Science and Engineering sponsored by NSF and DoD. The panel found that: important segments of the research & defense communities lack effective access to supercomputers; students are neither familiar with their capabilities nor trained in their use; access to supercomputers is inadequate in all disciplines; the capacity of today's supercomputers is orders of magnitude too small for currently urgent problems; the current development of those computers will yield only a small fraction of the capability technically achievable; computer manufacturers have neither the financial resources nor commercial motivation to undertake the requisite exploratory r & d. The number of supercomputer installations in the U.S. are less than in Europe or Japan. Most are at -- and only available to -- government labs. The only American universities with them at present are Minnesota, Purdue and Colorado State. Mainly because they're very expensive. A Cray goes for anywhere from $4-14 million + $1.5-5 million for peripherals + site preparation + approx. $30k/month for the service contract. NSF, with a Congressional FY85 apropriation of $40 million in hand, now aims to provide the research community with supercomputer centers of excellence that will become major nodes on a future national network. Datamation notes that the main competition may actually be between Cray and CDC. Ten proposals involve Crays ranging from the smallest X-MP to the high-end Cray 2. Seven applicants requested Cybers. Other machines suggested by potential participants include FPS boxes driven by IBM front ends, three Denelcors and one Amdahl. Datamation's opinion: two awards will be given to proposals involving Cray machines and one to a proposal involving a CDC Cyber 205 or higher-level machine such as ETA's GF-10. -- Bob Cunningham {dual|ihnp4|vortex}!islenet!bob Honolulu, Hawaii