The John von Neumann Center

The Proposal

When the call for proposals went out in 1984 for the establishment of the national supercomputer centers, a small number of active and involved computational scientists and engineers, some very closely involved with the NSF process in establishing these centers, analyzed the situation very carefully and generated a strategy that had a very high probability of placing their proposal in the winning set. One decision was to involve a modest number of prestigious universities in a consortium such that the combined prominence of the universities represented would easily outweigh almost any competition. Thus, the consortium included Brown University, Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, MIT, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rochester Institute, Rutgers University, and the Universities of Arizona and Colorado. (After the establishment of the JVNC, Columbia University joined the consortium.) This was a powerful roster of universities indeed.

A second important strategy was to propose a machine likely to be different from most of the other proposals. At the time, leaving aside IBM and Japan, Inc., the only two true participants were Cray Research and Engineering Technology Associates Systems (ETA). The CRAY X-MP was a mature and functioning system guaranteed to be able to supply the necessary resources for any center. The ETA-10, a machine under development at the time, had much potential and was being designed and manufactured by an experienced team that had spun off from Control Data Corporation (CDC). The ETA-10, if delivered with the capabilities promised, would exceed the performance of the Cray Research offerings at the time. A proposal based on the ETA-10 was likely to be a unique proposal.

These two strategic decisions were the crucial ones. Also, there were other factors that made the proposal yet more attractive. The most important of these was the aggressive networking stance of the proposal in using high-performance communications links to connect the consortium-member universities to the center.

Also, the plan envisioned a two-stage physical plant, starting with temporary quarters to house the center at the earliest possible date, followed by a permanent building to be occupied later. Another feature was to contract out the actual operations functions to one of the firms experienced in the operation of supercomputing centers at other laboratories.

Finally, the proposal was nicely complemented with a long list of proposed computational problems submitted by faculty members of the 12 founding institutions. Although these additional attributes of the proposal were not unique, they certainly enhanced the strong position of a consortium of prestigious universities operating a powerful supercomputer supplied by a new corporation supported by one of the most prominent of the old-time supercomputer firms. It should surprise no one that on the basis of peer reviews, NSF found the JVNC proposal to be an attractive one.

I would like now to explore the primary entities involved in the establishment, operation, funding, and oversight of the JVNC.

Consortium for Scientific Computing

The CSC is a nonprofit corporation formed by the 12 universities of the consortium for the sole purpose of running the JVNC. Initially, each university was to be represented within the consortium by the technical representative who had been the primary developer of the proposal submitted to NSF. Early in the incorporation process, representation on the consortium was expanded to include two individuals from each university—one technical faculty and one university administrator. The consortium Board of Directors elected an Executive Committee from its own membership. This committee of seven members, as in normal corporate situations, wielded the actual power of the consortium. The most important function of the CSC included two activities: (1) the appointment of a Chief Operating Officer (the President) and (2) the establishment of policies guiding the activities of the center. As we analyze what went wrong with the JVNC, we will see that the consortium, in particular the Executive Committee, did not restrict itself to these functions but ranged broadly over many activities, to the detriment of the JVNC.

The Universities

The universities were the stable corporate entities upon which the consortium's credibility was based. Once the universities agreed to go forth with the proposal and the establishment of the consortium, they played a very small role.

The proposal called for the universities to share in the support of the centers. Typically, the sharing was done "in kind" and not in actual dollars, and the universities were involved in establishing the bartering chips that were required.

The State of New Jersey

The State of New Jersey supported the consortium enthusiastically. It provided the only, truly substantial, expendable dollar funding to the JVNC above the base NSF funding. These funds were funneled through the New Jersey State Commission for Science and Technology. The state was represented on the consortium board by one nonvoting member.

The NSF

NSF had moved forward on the basis of the proposals of the Lax Report and, with only modest previous experience with such large and complex organizations, established the five centers. The OASC reported directly to the Director of NSF to manage the cooperative agreements with the centers. Most of the senior people in this small office were tapped from other directorates within NSF to take on difficult responsibilities, and these people often had little or no prior experience with supercomputers.

ETA

In August 1983, ETA had been spun off from CDC to develop and market the ETA-10, a natural follow-on of the modestly successful CYBER 205 line of computers. The reason for the establishment of ETA was to insulate from the rest of CDC the ETA development team and its very large demands for finances. This was both to allow ETA to do its job and to protect CDC from an arbitrary drain of resources.

The ETA machine was a natural extension of the CYBER 205 architecture. The primary architect was the same individual, and much of the development team was the same team, that had been involved in the development of the CYBER 205.

Zero One

The JVNC contracted the actual daily operations of its center to an experienced facilitator. The important advantage to this approach was the ability to move forward as quickly as possible by using the resources of an already extant entity with an existing infrastructure and experience.

Zero One, originally Technology Development Corporation, was awarded the contract because it had experience in operating supercomputing facilities at NASA Ames, and they appeared to have an adequate, if not large, personnel base. As it turned out, apart from a small number of people, all of the personnel assigned to the JVNC were newly hired.

JVNC

During the first half of 1985, the consortium moved quickly and initiated the efforts to establish the JVNC. One of the first efforts was to find a building. Once all the factors were understood, rather than the proposed two-phase building approach, it was decided to move forward with a permanent building as quickly as possible and to use temporary quarters to house personnel, but not equipment, while the building was being readied.

The site chosen for the JVNC was in the Forrestral Research Center off Route 1, a short distance from Princeton University. The building shell was in place at the time of the commitment by the consortium and it was only the interior "customer modification" that was required. Starting on July 1, 1986, the building functioned quite well for the purposes of the JVNC.

A small number of key personnel were hired. Contracts were written with the primary vendors. The Cooperative Agreement to define the funding profile and the division of responsibility between the consortium and the NSF was also drawn up.