UCSD Picked to Run U.S.-Funded Center for Supercomputer
UC San Diego will be the site of one of four national supercomputer centers being funded by the federal government to help maintain the supremacy of American scientific research, it was announced Monday.
The center at UCSD, estimated to cost $100 million over a five-year period, will be operated by GA Technologies, a La Jolla research facility that is a neighbor of UCSD and that specializes in atomic energy. The UC campus here has a worldwide reputation for scientific research and is a magnet for associated private industry ventures.
UCSD and GA, a subsidiary of Chevron Corp., head a group of 18 universities and private companies that won one of four grants made by the National Science Foundation after funding authorization last year by Congress for the supercomputers, which are the fastest computation devices now designed. Officials here hope to have the first phase of the computer system operating by early next year.
The San Diego consortium is the largest of the four selected by the foundation. The other centers will be at Princeton University, the University of Illinois and Cornell University. Twenty-two university teams competed for selection.
The U.S. scientific community has argued for several years that such centers are vital for keeping U.S. research ahead of Europe’s and Japan’s. Because of the expense of such computers, which calculate at the fastest speeds now possible, they cannot realistically be set up at individual universities but must be shared by a group of institutions.
“This is really a major, major event,” UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson said Monday in announcing the federal grant. “Congress, scientists, everyone has been talking about the need for supercomputer centers of this type. We have lost a little pace (scientifically) because we have not had the access (to supercomputers).”
Erich Bloch, director of the science foundation, said in Washington that scientific breakthroughs increasingly depend on easy access to supercomputers. Although American companies lead in the design of such computers, the United States has been lagging behind other countries in making them available to the university community at large. Bloch said that only private industry and government laboratories have used them with regularity.
Supercomputers are defined generally as the fastest and most powerful computer available at any particular time. They operate hundreds of times faster than normal industrial computers and thus make scientific computations realistic that otherwise would require prodigious effort on slower computers.
Sidney Karin, GA Technologies computer chief who will head the UCSD center, said that such computers have immediate application in fields ranging from weather forecasting to creation of drugs. He said that the use of supercomputers to design the latest model of the European Aerobus jet has resulted in a sleeker design and savings of hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel costs.
Atkinson hailed the selection of the UCSD-GA application as a major plus in attracting further research to San Diego.
“It has considerable benefits both in terms of the quality of people associated with it and for the image (of San Diego) associated with the computer center,” Atkinson said. “It will focus attention on San Diego and draw a lot of technical expertise here . . . and help establish the area’s preeminence as a high-technology area.”
GA President Kerry Dance said that although the center will not make money for his firm, it will help the company’s image.
“It’s something of real prestige for the community,” he said.
The center will employ approximately 60 people full time and be available to 200 researchers at any one time, Karin said. The National Science Foundation will set up guidelines for use of the computers within the year. The four centers are intended to be the first of an eventual nationwide academic network, similar to the network of telescopes such as Palomar’s that are shared for research.
The selection of UCSD for the San Diego Supercomputer Center may help compensate for the area’s loss in May, 1983, of a competition for a private supercomputer institute that went to Austin, Tex.
Atkinson said that the Texas-based institute does not have the expertise to set up the centers announced Monday.
Karin said that the new centers will be complementary to the Texas institute because they can use any new, more powerful computers designed in Austin.
“We essentially are set up to do research using computers,” Karin said. “Texas is set up to do research about computers. We can learn from each other.”
GA Technologies and the University of Illinois sent separate, unsolicited proposals for such centers to the National Science Foundation in 1983, Karin said. After receiving the proposals, the foundation decided to seek funding from Congress and set up the nationwide competition.
“It was a true technical competition based on the nature and quality of the research being done by each of the competitors,” Karin said. Atkinson said the combination of UCSD and GA expertise in computers gave them a leg up on competitors. GA helped set up a smaller computer service network a decade ago for atomic energy firms.
Congress has authorized $40 million for the centers this year and is expected to add $46 million for next year. The UCSD center eventually will receive $60 million from the National Science Foundation, as well as $25 million from the 18-member consortium, $5 million from the State of California and $10 million in grants from private industry.
The Cray Research Corp. of Minnesota will supply the supercomputer. Cray will also provide $5 million to the center in grants, Karin said.
In addition to UCSD and GA, members of the San Diego consortium include UCLA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, San Diego State University, UC San Francisco, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, University of Maryland, University of Utah, University of Hawaii, The Agouron Institute of San Diego, the Southwest Fisheries Center and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories.
