NSF centers directly 

 supported wittiin the 

 ASTA component 

 include: 



- Cornell Theory Center, 

 Ithaca, NY 



- National Center for 



Supercomputing 

 Applications, Champaign- 

 Urbana, IL (NCSA) 



- San Diego Supercomputer 



Center, San Diego, CA 



- Pittsburgh Supercomputing 



Center, Pittsburgh, PA 



- Center in Computer 



Graphics and Scientific 

 Visualization, University of 

 Utah 



- Center for Research on 

 Parallel Computation, Rice 

 University, Houston, TX 



components and services for the Nation's community of 

 researchers, scholars, and students that will foster inter- 

 action and collaboration; and to give rapid access to 

 researchers and students to facilities and other 

 resources for use in scholarly endeavors. These facili- 

 ties and resources include computation centers, labora- 

 tories, scientific instruments, and databases and 

 libraries. NSF also participates in the support (under 

 ARPA coordination) of the networking and communica- 

 tions research and development effort leading to early 

 deployment of advanced HPCC systems. This coordi- 

 nated research effort includes work on very high speed 

 switches and several wide-area research gigabit testbed 

 networks in support of Grand Challenge collaborations 

 and other applications. 



ASTA 



The ASTA component emphasizes the development of 

 algorithms and software technologies and the establish- 

 ment of research capability to address Grand Challenge 

 scale computational problems. Included in ASTA are: 

 research demonstrating the applicability of HPCS prod- 

 ucts to critical problems: building interdisciplinary collab- 

 oration and exchange; collaborative Grand Challenge 

 and large scale computational research; computational 

 techniques and software technologies for scalable paral- 

 lel and distributed heterogeneous computing systems; 

 scientific databases; and deploying and configuring new 

 parallel systems in research centers and testbed facili- 

 ties accessible to researchers, students, and educators 

 nationwide. 



NSF's National Supercomputer Centers and Science 

 and Technology Centers are hubs of intellectual and 

 educational activity, serving researchers, students, and 

 teachers from many disciplines and educational levels. 

 They seek to define and provide a premier environment 

 for coordinated approaches to Grand Challenge prob- 

 lems. The centers are currently implementing the con- 

 cept of a "metacenter:" planning and working closely 

 together, the individual centers pool their technological 

 resources, support services and administrative functions 

 so that the collective resources are viewed and made 

 available to users as a single, powerful computing envi- 

 ronment. With the metacenter concept, new systems 

 and services can be incorporated into the overall envi- 

 ronment without disturbing the stable computing environ- 

 ment that is in place. The concept can also offer addi- 

 tional flexibility in managing and optimizing the centers' 

 operations. 



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