NSF, Funding, and Funding Leverage

We now come to an important complication, not unique to the JVNC but common to all of the NSF centers. To be as aggressive as possible, NSF extended itself as far as the funding level for the OASC would allow and encouraged cost-sharing arrangements to leverage the funding. This collateral funding, which came from universities, states, and corporate associates interested in participating in the centers' activities, was encouraged, expected, and counted upon for adequate funding for the centers.

As the cooperative agreements were constructed in early 1985, the funding profiles for the five-year agreements were laid out for each individual center's needs. The attempt to meet that profile was a painful experience for the JVNC management, and I believe the same could be said for the other centers as well. For the JVNC, much of the support in kind from universities was paper; indeed, in some cases, it was closer to being a reverse contribution.

As the delivery of the primary computer equipment to JVNC was delayed while some of the other centers were moving forward more effectively, the cooperative agreements were modified by NSF to accommodate these changes and stay within the actual funding profile at NSF. Without a modern functioning machine, the JVNC found it particularly difficult to attract corporate support. The other NSF centers, where state-of-the-art supercomputer systems were operational, were in much better positions to woo industrial partners, and they were more successful. Over the five-year life of the JVNC, only about $300,000 in corporate support was obtained; that was less than 10 per cent of the proposed

amount and less than three-quarters of one per cent of the actual NSF contribution.

One corporate entity, ETA, contributed a large amount to the JVNC. Because the delivery of the ETA-10 was so late, the payment for the system was repeatedly delayed. The revenue that ETA expected from delivery of the ETA-10 never came. Thus, in a sense, the hardware that was delivered to the JVNC—two CYBER 205 systems and the ETA-10—represented a very large ETA corporate contribution to the JVNC. The originally proposed ETA contribution, in discounts on the ETA-10, personnel support, and other unbilled services, was $9.6 million, which was more than 10 per cent of the proposed level of the NSF contribution.

A year after the original four centers were started, the fiscal stress in the program was quite apparent. Nevertheless, NSF chose to start the fifth center, thereby spreading its resources yet thinner. It is true that the NSF budgets were then growing, and it may have seemed to the NSF that it was a good idea to establish one more center. In retrospect, the funding level was inadequate for a new center. Even today, the funding levels of all the centers remain inadequate to support dynamic, powerful centers able to maintain strong, state-of-the-art technology.