9632677 Williams Computational researchers in the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia (a.k.a. the 6-PAC) have formed the South East Partnership to Share Computational Resources (SEPSCoR). The supercomputers located in each of these states will be linked by high speed wide-area networks to form a more powerful "virtual supercomputer", which will be focused on the solution of highly intractable computational problems, such as the modeling and molecular dynamics of complex materials. This shared resource will be available to all researchers who are approved by the consortium. The high-speed networks which will make this possible will be managed by a partnership with the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) and the networking Corporation, Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). This award will fund the start-up costs of this networking partnership in its first year, after which, a full maintenance proposal will be submitted to the Division of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure. The net result of this project will be the demonstration of how computational science can be advanced through the utilization of an advanced networking infrastructure. The initial projects using this interstate facility will be in the area of computational materials research, but in the long term, other numerically-intensive areas will benefit as well.
