Originally appeared in Monday, September 29, 2003 Oak Ridger
URL: http://www.oakridger.com/stories/092903/new_20030929016.shtml
ORNL merges onto high-speed network
OFFICIAL: 'It will essentially do
what the interstate highway system
did.'
By: R. Cathey Daniels | Oak Ridger Staff
cathey.daniels@oakridger.com
Go Southeast, young man.
The superhighway of high speed scientific information is expanding to the Southeast, opening up
new frontiers for researchers, universities and national laboratories.
The National Science Foundation was to announce Monday its intent to send a $3.9 million
grant to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Center for Computational Sciences, according to
Thomas Zacharia, the lab's associate director for computational sciences.
"It will essentially do what the interstate highway system did," said Zacharia in a phone
interview Monday. "The interstate closed the distance between people and allowed more
interaction and more commerce and more economic development. This will have a similar
interplay between scientists and researchers which will allow greater scientific production, and
also I believe greater economic development."
The grant will allow a third NSF high-speed network hub to open in Atlanta, Ga. Already the
west coast Los Angeles hub is connected to Chicago. The Atlanta hub will be another step in
connecting the national cyberinfrastructure, said Zacharia. The hubs are connected by high-speed
optical links in multiples of 10 gigabits, or 10 billion bits per second.
ORNL will connect to the Atlanta hub at 10 gigabits initially and will work with Georgia Tech to
equip, operate and maintain the hub, according to lab officials.
The high-performance network connections will send data from the Spallation Neutron Source,
the High Flux Isotope Reactor and the Center for Computational Sciences to researchers across
the nation.
"This award is a wonderful illustration of the continuing partnership between NSF and the
Department of Energy's Office of Science on the TeraGrid," Raymond Orbach, director of the
DOE office, said in a prepared statement. The TeraGrid, an NSF initiative started in August
2001 with a $53 million award to four other sites, is a high speed "backbone" network for
relaying scientific information. When completed it is expected to operate at 40 gigabits (40
billion bits) per second and be the fastest research network in the world, according to officials.
"ORNL's Center for Computational Sciences will now be able to provide the nation's research
community with expanded access to ORNL's extraordinary neutron science facilities," said
Orbach.
The ORNL-led addition to the TeraGrid, called the Southeastern TeraGrid Extension for
Neutron Science, will allow scientists working at these facilities to use the massive computing
and data storage resources on the TeraGrid to quickly make detailed analyses of the data from
neutron scattering experiments, and get real-time feedback, according to a lab press release.
Collaborators on the proposal were the University of Tennessee, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Duke University, Florida State University, North Carolina State University,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University of Virginia.
ORNL's proposal was one of just three winners. Others receiving NSF funding this year were
Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas-Austin and a partnership of
universities in Indiana led by Indiana University and Purdue University.
Lab Director Jeff Wadsworth praised the effort in a prepared statement
"We are grateful to NSF for their grant to ORNL's Center for Computational Sciences,"
Wadsworth said. "Their partnership will support our efforts to broaden access to some of the
fantastic new research facilities at the laboratory."
All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger
Mirrored with permission
