This proposal requests support for establishing a formal means for collecting and storing information on the nature and use of academic computing resources dedicated to large scale scientific computing (supercomputing) in the United States. Funding is requested for staff support for conducting an information gathering activity, an organizational workshop, and related costs. It has been voiced on frequent occasions that such an information directory, if easily accessible, and maintained with current data, could ablely serve to assist the users, administrators and planners in the area of high performance computing. The effort, proposed by Charles Bender, director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, would be carried out under the auspices and with the involvement of members of the Coalition of Academic Supercomputing Centers (CASC), a consortium of 15 state and national academic supercomputing centers in the United States. CASC has served as a successful medium of information exchange among supercomputing centers and is likely to enlarge its role in this regard as high performance computing resources become more widely deployed. The specific intent of this proposal is to develop the concept and structure of a National Information Directory for academic supercomputing centers and high performance computing resources. As a first step, a study would be conducted to solicit baseline information related to how users view their evolving computational requirements and their experiences at existing high performance computing centers. The study materials would be distributed and responses collected via the national network. Given broad participation and involvement of users and providers of high performance computing resources this effort is likely to produce valuable information and useful products.
