NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery is presented in a set of interrelated chapters that describe the various challenges and opportunities in the complementary areas that make up cyberinfrastructure: computing systems, data, information resources, networking, digitally enabled-sensors, instruments, virtual organizations, and observatories, along with an interoperable suite of software services and tools.

This technology is complemented by the interdisciplinary teams of professionals that are responsible for its development, deployment and its use in transformative approaches to scientific and engineering discovery and learning. The vision also includes attention to the educational and workforce initiatives necessary for both the creation and effective use of cyberinfrastructure.

The five chapters of this document set out NSF’s cyberinfrastructure vision. The first, A Call for Action, presents NSF’s vision and commitment to a cyberinfrastructure initiative. NSF will play a leadership role in the development and support of a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure essential to 21st century advances in science and engineering research and education. The vision focuses on a time frame of 2006-2010. The mission is for cyberinfrastructure to be human-centered, world-class, supportive of broadened participation in science and engineering, sustainable, and stable but extensible.

High Performance Computing (HPC) in support of modeling, simulation, and extraction of knowledge from huge data collections is increasingly essential to a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines, often multi-disciplinary (e.g. physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, cosmology, computer science, mathematics), as well as multi-scalar in dimensions of space (e.g., nanometers to light-years) time (e.g., picoseconds1 to billions of years), and complexity. A vision for petascale2 science and engineering for the academic community, enabled by high  performance computing, is presented along with a series of principles that would be used to guide NSF science-
driven HPC investments. This would result in a sustained petascale capable system deployed in the FY 2010 timeframe. The plan presented addresses HPC acquisition and deployment and various aspects of HPC software and tools, in addition to the necessary scalable applications that would execute on these HPC assets.

An effective computing environment designed to meet the computational needs of a range of science and engineering applications will include a variety of computing systems with complementary performance capabilities. NSF will invest in leadership class environments in the 0.5-10 petascale performance range. Strong partnerships involving other federal agencies, universities, industry and state government are also critical to success.

NSF will also promote resource sharing between and among academic institutions to optimize the accessibility and use of HPC assets deployed and supported at the campus level. Supporting software services include the provision of intelligent development and problem-solving environments and tools. These tools are designed to provide improvements in ease of use, reusability of modules, and portable performance. ...

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Preface:

The National Science Foundation’s Cyberinfrastructure Council (CIC), based on extensive input from the research community, has developed a comprehensive vision to guide the Foundation’s future investments in cyberinfrastructure (CI). In 2005, four multi-disciplinary, cross-foundational teams were created and charged with drafting a vision for cyberinfrastructure in four overlapping and complementary areas: 1) High Performance Computing, 2) Data, Data Analysis, and Visualization, 3) Cyber Services and Virtual Organizations, and 4) Learning and Workforce Development.

Draft versions of the document were posted on the NSF website and public comments were solicited from the community. These drafts were also reviewed for comment by the National Science Board. The National Science Foundation thanks all of those who provided feedback on the Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery document.

Your comments were carefully reviewed and considered during preparation of this version of the document, which is intended to be a living document, and will be updated periodically.

Letter from The Director:

Dear Colleague:
I am pleased to present NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery. This document, developed in consultation with the wider science, engineering, and education communities, lays out an evolving vision that will help to guide the Foundation’s future investments in cyberinfrastructure.

At the heart of the cyberinfrastructure vision is the development of a cultural community that supports peer-to-peer collaboration and new modes of education based upon broad and open access to leadership computing; data and information resources; online instruments and observatories; and visualization and collaboration services.

Cyberinfrastructure enables distributed knowledge communities that collaborate and communicate across disciplines, distances and cultures. These research and education communities extend beyond traditional brick-and-mortar facilities, becoming virtual organizations that transcend geographic and institutional boundaries. This vision is new, exciting and bold.

Realizing the cyberinfrastructure vision described in this document will require the broad participation and collaboration of individuals from all fields and institutions, and across the entire spectrum of education. It will require leveraging resources through multiple and diverse partnerships among academia, industry and government.

An important challenge is to develop the leadership to move the vision forward in anticipation of a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure that will strengthen innovation, economic growth and education.

Sincerely,
Arden L. Bement, Jr.
Director

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