[ The following is notes on the NHSE and how it would provide a support
mechanism for the CTA teams.  More words on this can be found from
Kennedy's text. ]

The National HPCC Software Exchange (NHSE) is a project of the Center
for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC) to build a repository of
software for and information about HPCC systems.  As well as containing
a catalog of free software which is directly downloadable, it also
contains an embryo guide to commercial software packages for HPCC
systems.  A ``roadmap'' guide is also under construction to assist both
newcomers and experienced HPCC professions to navigate the information
and choose the most suitable software package for their needs.  The
NHSE material is built using World Wide Web technology and is
physically distributed amongst several CRPC sites.  Search engines
allow the remote user to perform keyword seaches and the roadmap
provides a hypertextual dictionary level access to HPCC terminology and
software packages.  Various surveys and databases are provided such as
for HPCC hardware platforms and for HPCC conferences and meetings.

We envisage that the NHSE mechanism can be used as a prototype for MSRC
users.  Each CTA could have its own customised access point to the
exsiting NHSE material, as well as special purpose collections of
material that can be put in place especially for CTA users.  This new
material might be collected by the proposed CTA support teams and
coordinated by the CTA lead sites either on their own WWW servers or
using MSRC servers as required.

The CTA team staff put in place at MSRC sites will be familiar with the
material in each CTA WWW server and will also be able to pass on
requirements to the maintainers as well as collecting other feedback
from the MSRC users.

We can employ all the experiences and expertise from building the NHSE
to provide customised WWW facilities for each CTA.  Not only can we
build the prototypes for these CTA access points, but we can transfer
the technology required to build and maintain these to the MSRC sites
themselves, so they can uptake this technology for their own long term
use.

In addition we can provide early access to many of the WWW-based
software tools and systems that we are developing, and can allow MSRC
users the opportunity to provide feedback into how these tools should be
devloped to best support MSRC.

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[ The NHSE mechanism could be adapted as a technological support activity
for the CTA teams.   We should empasise that we (CRPC at least) uses
all this technology in its day to day operations and that we are not
proposing some artificial technological white elephant here.  We can
transfer the technology itself as well as the means to actually use it
to MSRC users.

This section also links to the software catalog, as the NHSE is already
such a catalog.  We should emphasise that the CTA servers will build on
existing work, and provide customised access to a national resource.
The customised access will make MSRC users' searches better
coordinated and faster. ]