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.