9502979 Du This award provides support to develop a prototype distributed computing, storage and scientific visualization facility for the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Key elements of the facility include a distributed parallel storage system with several physically distributed RAID systems with high speed ATM connections and a high-bandwidth disk system with direct connection to a FIBER Channel swith, a distributed computing server with clusters of high-end workstations and multiprocessors, a high resolution display unit, and a high-speed local, metropolitan, and wide area network infrastructure. Projects include technology development in the areas of multimedia servers and database servers; network research in the areas of network design, control and performance; and research in parallel architecture and system software. Applications areas to be supported include manufacturing, healthcare, scientific computing, and scientific visualization.