|
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering.〔〔 NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Encyclopedia Britannica: University of Illinois includes the NCSA unit )〕 and provides high-performance computing resources to researchers across the country. Support for NCSA comes from the National Science Foundation,〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】 NSF Press Release 11-152: XSEDE Project Brings Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, Digital Services and Expertise to Nation's Scientists and Engineers )〕 〔(【引用サイトリンク】 NSF Press Release 13-056: NSF-Supported Blue Waters, One of the World's Most Powerful Computers, Is Open for Research )〕 〔(【引用サイトリンク】 website= www.nsf.gov/ )〕 the state of Illinois,〔 the University of Illinois, business and industry partners,〔 and other federal agencies. NCSA provides leading-edge computing, data storage, and visualization resources. NCSA computational and data environment implements a multi-architecture hardware strategy, deploying both clusters and shared memory systems to support high-end users and communities on the architectures best-suited to their requirements. Nearly 1,360 scientists, engineers and students used the computing and data systems at NCSA to support research in more than 830 projects. NCSA is led by astrophysicist Ed Seidel. == History == NCSA is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 website= www.nsf.gov/ )〕 The idea for NCSA and the four other supercomputer centers arose from the frustration of its founder, Larry Smarr, who wrote an influential paper, "The Supercomputer Famine in American Universities," in 1982, after having to travel to Europe in summertime to access American supercomputers and conduct his research. Larry Smarr wrote a proposal to address the future needs of scientific research. Seven other University of Illinois professors joined as co-principal investigators, and many others provided descriptions of what could be accomplished if the proposal were accepted. Known as the Black Proposal (after the color of its cover), it was submitted to the NSF in 1983. It met the NSF's mandate and its contents immediately generated excitement. However, the NSF had no organization in place to support it, and the proposal itself did not contain a clearly defined home for its implementation. The NSF established an Office of Scientific Computing in 1984 and, with strong congressional support, it quickly announced a national competition that would fund a set of supercomputer centers like the one described in the Black Proposal.〔. Congressional hearings of 10 June 1985 with testimony from Supercomputer Center officials.〕 The result was that four supercomputer centers would be chartered (Cornell, Illinois, Princeton, and San Diego), with a fifth (Pittsburgh) added later. The Black Proposal was approved in 1985 and marked the foundation of NCSA, with $42,751,000 in funding from 1 January 1985 through 31 December 1989. This was also noteworthy in that the NSF's action of approving an unsolicited proposal was unprecedented. NCSA opened its doors in January 1986. 〔(【引用サイトリンク】 NASA information on the NCSA "Service Provider" )〕 In 2007, NCSA was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to build "Blue Waters",〔(【引用サイトリンク】 website= www.nsf.gov )〕 a supercomputer capable of performing quadrillions of calculations per second, a level of performance known as petascale. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「National Center for Supercomputing Applications」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|