The U.S. National Science Foundation last week announced support for two new supercomputing acquisitions for the open science community in addition to existing resources, coming online by 2016, that will enable a wide spectrum of emerging scientific frontiers and communities to harness advanced computing.

In order to enable an ‘inclusive computing environment for science and engineering,’ “Bridges” – the system at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and “Jetstream,” co-located at the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) and The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) — offer high-end, large-scale computing resources, explains the statement making the announcement.

“Bridges and Jetstream will expand the capabilities of the NSF-supported computational infrastructure, pushing the frontiers of science forward in the life sciences, the social sciences and other emerging computational fields by exploiting interactive and cloud-based computing paradigms,” enunciates Irene Qualters, division director for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at NSF.

“Bridges and Jetstream offer a mix of new capabilities and usage modalities, from large memory nodes to virtualization technologies that allow a PC-like experience via the cloud. Together, these technologies will let a broader swath of researchers use advancing computing while making new kinds of scientific inquiry possible,” she further added.

Part of NSF’s eXtreme Digital (XD) program which is the most comprehensive collation of integrated digital resources and services enabling open science research in the world, both systems will have the NSF-supported Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment project provide user services and training for them.

It is reported that experts in cyberinfrastructure, software providers and leading application scientists in the nation are heading the teams working with Jetstream and Bridges.

Bridges, provides “a new approach to supercomputing that focuses on research problems that are limited by data movement, not floating-point speed” while Jetstream will help deploy cloud-based computation to the national cyberinfrastructure. A $9.6-million NSF grant will fund the former slated to begin in November 2014, while Jetstream will get $6.6-million to go into production in January 2016.

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(Image Credit: Sonny Abesamis)