Cyberinfrastructure refers to the ability to access and integrate today's hardware, software, and human information technology resources in order to facilitate science and engineering goals. This proposal describes a plan of action for building and delivering cyberinfrastructure. The efforts of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) will focus on the provisioning of a deeply integrated environment, which coordinates hardware, software, and human resources to engage and support users, and the development of critical infrastructure to drive research and education.
SDSC activities will have particular focus on building the data cyberinfrastructure so critical to managing, understanding, and gaining knowledge from today's deluge of data. The Center will also focus on building the community for cyberinfrastructure: extending the reach of researchers and educators through deep collaborations, professional-level services and software, large-scale data management and computational facilities, and the engagement and support of new communities of social scientists and computer scientists who can play an important role in cyberinfrastructure as process-builders.
Cyberinfrastructure extends the reach of researchers and educators past the capabilities, challenges, and limitations of their home environment.. Cyberinfrastructure provides a vehicle for accessing additional infrastructure that benefits users significantly in their research and education efforts. SDSC will be a core resource for cyberinfrastructure through highly valued, applied, and multi-disciplinary expertise and community leadership; large-scale data and computational resources; and robust, professional, user- focused software. SDSC will provide:
o A broad spectrum of cyberinfrastructure software and services that enable users to coordinate available technological tools in their home environment with the larger landscape of cyberinfrastructure resources and impact their science efforts.
o A Synthesis Center in partnership with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-IT2) [1] for leveraging infrastructure across projects and disciplines. o Intensive strategic collaboration projects among domain scientists and computer scientists that bridge science and technology goals.
o An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Laboratory that will be a flexible environment to support research, development, experimentation, and evaluation with cyberinfrastructure technology and tools.
o A comprehensive Integrated Data Cyberinfrastructure to serve a broad class of existing and emerging data-oriented users.
The customers and beneficiaries of cyberinfrastructure are its users, and the ultimate metric of success for cyberinfrastructure is the ability to focus on the challenges of the science rather than the challenges of the tools in driving new discovery. SDSC will build and deliver key services, infrastructure, and innovations that will enhance the ultimate success of cyberinfrastructure. Together with a community of collaborators including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), TeraGrid/ETF, project-focused community efforts, and a broad group of domain scientists, engineers and computer scientists, SDSC will provide a cohesive combination of expertise, hardware, and software to facilitate the transformation of the cyberinfrastructure vision into reality.
