$110 Million for New Supercomputer Sought by Center on UCSD Campus
The San Diego Supercomputer Center has asked the National Science Foundation for $110 million to acquire a new, state-of-the-art Cray YMP supercomputer, install two advanced data storage devices and build a 15,000-square-foot addition at the center on the UC San Diego campus.
However, Congress has not yet approved the NSF’s proposed $2-billion fiscal 1988 budget, and the NSF has not determined what parts of the center’s request will be funded, according to John Connolly, director of the NSF’s advanced scientific computer division. The NSF has funded supercomputer centers at San Diego and four other universities across the country.
“Each of the centers has been forwarding funding requests (for upcoming years), which is what they’re supposed to be doing,” Connolly said. “What we have to do is determine what money we have and how we will spend it.”
The $100-million center at UC San Diego, described last year by Gov. George Deukmejian as a “treasure of modern technology,” also has asked the State of California for $6 million to fund a graphics and animation project. The center soon will ask the NSF for an additional $6 million to complete the proposed, $12-million graphics project.
The state previously agreed to give the center $1 million a year for 10 years.
The $110-million NSF request, which was submitted about a month ago, would allow the center to acquire a $40-million Cray YMP. That model is four times more powerful than the existing, $14-million Cray XMP-48 that handles about 1 billion calculations per second, according to center spokeswoman Nicki Hobson.
Working at Capacity
If the NSF funding request is granted, the YMP model would be delivered in 1989. The center wants to lease a Cray XMP-416 that would be used on an interim basis until the YMP model is delivered, Hobson said. The center wants the XMP-416 because its XMP-48 is working at its capacity, according to Hobson.
The center wants to spend $10 million for a solid state storage device that would “allow the center to (more rapidly) manipulate huge chunks of data,” according to Hobson. The center also plans to buy a second, $6-million disk storage device.
The center wants to spend about $10 million to add a 15,000-square-foot addition to the 58,000-square-foot center. The addition would be used for office space, Hobson said.
About $73 million of the $110-million request would go toward capital improvements and related labor costs, Hobson said. The remaining $40 million would help to cover operating costs through the end of fiscal 1993, Hobson said.
The center’s industrial participation program, which has moved slower than the center anticipated, has generated $4 million in contributions from about 25 companies, Hobson said. The center’s operating budget calls for $7 million in industrial contributions by 1990, Hobson said.
“Industry, like government, moves slowly,” said Connolly, who added that industrial participating has “moved more slowly than we anticipated” at each of the five NSF-supported supercomputer centers across the United States.
