A Scalable Organization for the Development
of HPCC Software and Systems
Kim Mills and Geoffrey Fox
Northeast Parallel Architectures at Syracuse University
InfoMall is a program led by The Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) featuring a partnership of over twenty-five organizations and a plan for accelerating development of the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) software and systems industry. HPCC is a critical technology where the U.S. has clear international leadership and which will have unprecedented dual-use impact on industry, education, society, and defense. Acceptance of HPCC by these real world sectors is held up by the extremely hard problem of HPCC software development. InfoMall employs a novel technology development strategy involving closely linked programs in technology execution and certification, software development, marketing, education and training, economic development and small business support. InfoMall has excellent HPCC and other facility infrastructure. InfoMall partners have unrivaled expertise in all the areas critical to rapid development of the HPCC software industry. The process is constructed and explained by analogy to a full service set of stores in a shopping mall. InfoMall is a concept which can create 15,000 jobs in New York State, and be scaled in future years to create an order of magnitude more jobs nationally.
InfoMall is an innovative technology transfer program designed to help create an HPCC software industry and produce new software products and services for the information age. InfoMall uniquely combines economic development funding, high technology research centers, industry partners, small business entrepreneurs, and business support organizations to apply state of the art information technologies to industry, school districts, hospitals, small businesses, and government services.
We use the powerful analogy of a retail shopping mall to communicate our approach to linking emerging technologies, "virtual corporations," business support, and new markets. As in a shopping mall, InfoMall will contain superstores of equipment vendors (Digital, IBM, MasPar, New York Telephone, Oracle), large company and small business product stores (Kodak, Martin-Marietta, MCC, NYNEX), software boutiques (Portland Group Inc., CRi, Isis, Sonnet Software), an education wing (NPAC, Booz-Allen Hamilton, Cornell, The Center for Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC), NYSERNet) a marketing wing (Booz-Allen Hamilton, IBM Federal Systems Company, Integrated Systems Solutions Corp., Sterling Software) off-the-shelf technologies, incubator space, and a jobs office.
Consumers of InfoMall products will have different needs and shop in different parts of the mall. Industry managers might enter the mall through training courses and workshops offered in the education wing. Software companies may seek out a combination of off-the-shelf technologies and emerging technologies that have not yet reached the marketplace. Large corporations can visit the marketing wing to develop new markets for products enhanced by InfoMall technologies.
A central element of InfoMall is the technology wing. As a high technology university research center, NPAC is closely linked, often as research partners, to the leading technology development centers in the nation (Center for Research on Parallel Computation, Cornell, Rome Laboratory). InfoMall gathers the best technologies available nationally (e.g., networks, computer architectures, software, databases) and puts these resources to work in the local economy. InfoMall partners in industry help connect small InfoMall companies with new markets, and support dynamic links among small companies that team as a "virtual corporation." InfoMall's economic development partners (New York State, Technology Development Organizations, the New York City Partnership) provide business and financial support, and will help InfoMall stimulate creation of new jobs.
To put emerging information technologies to use, InfoMall supports a number of discrete steps for connecting technology developers with end users. Emerging technologies must first be integrated, via the technology wing, into the mall technology stores. For example, a new database system might be implemented on a variety of parallel computers to evaluate the strengths of each approach. Software teams developing new products draw upon InfoMall technology resources, along with related technical and business support services. For example, an on-line database service might also require use of parallel search algorithms and high speed networking facilities. The product of this software team may then become part of a larger set of technologies and services offered by an integration company, which has expertise in bringing new technologies into the marketplace. The end user finds a solution to a problem. Software teams produce innovative products for the marketplace based on the latest information technologies. InfoMall provides "one-stop shopping" for the necessary technologies, technical and business support, and market opportunities resources.
InfoMall projects now under development include environmental modeling (IBM), electric power transmission simulation (Niagara-Mohawk Power Corporation), electronic access to image libraries (Kodak), fraud detection in health care payments (Booz, Allen Hamilton, The Federal Bureau of Investigation), financial modeling in the stock market (NPAC and IBM), collaborative cardiology and heart surgery (Veterans Administration Hospital, NYNEX), and combining electronic entertainment with education (Abrams Gentile Entertainment and NPAC).
HPCC is a critical technology on the threshold of unprecedented global impact in industry, education, and society in general. HPCC will only realize this promise when a viable software industry exists.
HPCC was established as a national scientific priority by a Presidential initiative, and underpins the current National Information Infrastructure initiative. The National Competitiveness Act of 1993, emphasizes technology research and development in education, manufacturing, health care, on-line digital libraries, and access by all citizens. The National Information Infrastructure Act of 1993 expands the national High-Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 to bring libraries, local governments, schools, and health care facilities onto the national computer network.
InfoMall will accelerate the development of a $100B HPCC industry by the year 2000. How? By leveraging the decisive U.S. lead in High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) technology, now. The urgent challenge before us is to convert our lead in HPCC technology into global economic competitive advantage and corresponding benefits to national security. If the United States does not apply and use our current technology, this advantage will be lost to our economic competitors in the Pacific Rim much in the same way the consumer electronics market was lost.
We are moving into a new information age for corporate management, health care, education, and entertainment and collaborative research in virtual laboratories. HPCC will enable this transition with pervasive opportunities for strengthening the competitiveness of U.S. industry. HPCC is essential in all aspects of United States modern defense systems and consequently has been developed extensively by the Department of Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Thus, both the basic technology and its applications are intrinsically dual-use.
HPCC has demonstrated great success in academia and laboratories but has no significant acceptance in industry, education, and society in general. Both technical and social obstacles currently limit use of HPCC technologies.
The technical difficulty is that HPCC software development lags behind hardware development. HPCC hardware is essentially mature, and over the next three years we expect to see developments such as improved chip technology and packaging that will further enhance hardware capabilities. The New York State supported ACTION program at the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) surveyed the possible use of HPCC in industry, and showed universally important opportunities, but the lack of available software was an essential difficulty. The necessary algorithms were known, but the needed software development was stymied by a set of technical and cultural issues compounded by the revolutionary nature of HPCC. Complete rewriting of the code, involving hundreds of thousands of lines, for many applications is often required. Software development is always hard, HPCC development is hard, and HPCC software development is doubly hard.
The essential research in computer science and engineering is for the most part complete and HPCC is a proven technology. However, HPCC technologies have not been systematically gathered, integrated, and applied to challenging real-world applications. To jump-start the largely non-existent HPCC software industry, we established InfoMall in July, 1993 at NPAC at Syracuse University. InfoMall features a partnership of approximately twenty-four organizations from industry, university, small business, economic development, and business support organizations. This partnership offers closely linked programs in:
* HPCC technology integration
* software development
* marketing
* education and training
* economic development
* small business support.
NPAC established InfoMall specifically to support the creation of a HPCC software industry by offering a broad range of technological, business, and marketing skills supported by a state of the art infrastructure. We are currently in phase one of building InfoMall (Table 1), and find the analogy of a retail shopping mall appropriate to communicate the essential concept in InfoMall of "one-stop shopping" for fully supported information technologies.
InfoMall is shown in Figure 1 with the various types of stores labeled according to the key skills of the partner organizations. InfoMall provides a regional infrastructure for HPCC hardware, software, integrated systems, and education and training. Having worldwide scope, InfoMall offers the best available HPCC technologies to consumers of HPCC products. Shoppers at the mall are military, civilian and academic consumers as well as software developers.
InfoMall includes large "anchor" firms offering a range of HPCC products and services. We expect small "specialty" firms to be the prime sources of innovative software required to foster widespread use of maturing HPCC hardware. InfoMall will form "virtual companies" consisting of creative combinations of InfoMall participants to develop solutions to multidisciplinary and multi-industry problems. InfoMall provides centralized support services, including assistance for consumers, business support and commercialization assistance for small companies, and education and training. InfoMall's approach provides a model for HPCC software development which can be scaled from our New York State base to other regions of the country in the future.
InfoMall adopts a step-wise model for HPCC software development illustrated in Figure 2. The steps of this process correspond to different wings of InfoMall with their separate partner stores. The key components of this HPCC software development process include the following:
* InfoTech is a technology integration program to gather, evaluate and integrate the best global HPCC research technologies and deposit them into the warehouse InfoWare as re-usable technologies.
* InfoTeam represents software development teams which are either small businesses or groups inside large corporations. InfoTeam takes re-usable technologies and integrates and develops them into domain specific re-usable application components.
* InfoMarket provides the primary link between the software development process (InfoTeam, InfoTech) and the HPCC consumers. This link initially establishes technical and market criteria for commercialization potential. It also performs the commercialization functions ultimately leading to product sales. InfoMarket includes in the InfoMall partnership marketing arms of HPCC vendors but also other market organizations with unique consumer relationships, e.g., computer services (outsourcing), consulting and system integration companies.
* The remaining InfoMall stores provide essential services and infrastructure needed to implement the process described above. These include: InfoSchool which offers training, education, and consulting to all customers; HPCC facilities on which to develop, test, and deploy software products; and economic development and other support for small businesses.
The HPCC software development process of Figure 2 is intrinsically dual-use as both input technologies and consumers are both military and civilian. Further, InfoMall's organization of the process around a warehouse of re-usable technology pieces (RTPs), and re-usable application pieces (RAPs), is designed to enhance re-use in both defense and civilian applications of the very best software components.
Section 2 gives a full description of the InfoMall partners and programs. In particular Section 2.2.3 describes each partner's role and Section 2.3 defines the nine specific program elements in InfoMall. Section 2.3.1 describes our excellent facilities which include the latest parallel computers at Cornell and Syracuse and a state of the art ATM network NYNET which links these facilities to Rome Laboratory, an Air Force Superlab.
InfoTech is a particularly important program and is managed by the Center for Research in Parallel Computation (CRPC), an NSF Science and Technology Center. InfoTech discussed in detail later in Section 2.3.2, is the manager of InfoMall's technology warehouse. As such, it analyzes and maintains current "stock" elements of world class HPCC technology, while providing direct technical expertise for transitioning next generation components into truly demonstrable and re-usable application and technology pieces. Other InfoTech activities include gathering and classifying technologies; developing a methodology for the decomposition of applications into component technologies (a generalized library function); development and maintenance of metrics and benchmarks for systematic evaluation; and promotion and development of open interfaces to allow integration of technologies (i.e., vendor neutral open system "seals of approval"). InfoTech maximizes the re-use and dual-use of technologies and minimize unnecessary duplication in technology development.
There are several stumbling blocks to deployment of HPCC in the real world. Following are some examples that illustrate InfoMall's solution. InfoMall--the collaborative partnership--provides a new approach to linking HPCC technology developers and technology consumers. Relatively mature technologies can make this link in one leap; for example the NSF supercomputing centers have successfully brought vector supercomputing technologies to large corporations such as Caterpillar and Corning. HPCC technology transfer cannot be approached in the same way because HPCC technologies are harder to use--they are more diverse, require sophisticated technical support, and are rapidly evolving. A small company (MapPower, located in Cortland, N.Y.) which currently produces two-dimensional Geographic Information System (GIS) support for city planning identified an opportunity for a full, three-dimensional package. This requires a parallel graphics renderer (with an appropriate interface for their GIS), virtual reality front ends, backend HPCC servers shared between different cities, and high speed links to the server. We know how to implement each component and this has been demonstrated in laboratory setups. However, these necessary HPCC components are not available in a commercially supported form as RTPs. A small city planning software company does not have the expertise or resources to supply the necessary HPCC components. InfoMall can solve this problem. The database and network components can be purchased at InfoMall stores; remaining components such as a parallel renderer must be obtained and integrated by a virtual corporation of linked software teams.
InfoMall currently includes several projects developing over twenty-five re-usable technology pieces and re-usable application pieces which are described in detail in Section 2.3.3. These range from medical collaboration and fraud detection to chemical modeling. Kodak contributes significantly to the set of re-usable technology pieces and re-usable application pieces we use to initially form InfoMall. Kodak is the developer of Global Imagery On-Demand (GIODE) technology. GIODE is an example of a base technology providing on-demand search and retrieval of digital images which InfoMall will use in partnership with Kodak to develop applications in Health Care and imagery intelligence, while also creating a catalyst for new employment opportunities in the commerce of images. These applications will be built on top of Kodak's heterogeneous database and image library technologies.
InfoMall--The Cost and the Benefit
We are developing InfoMall as four one year phases corresponding to mall construction, deployment to Upstate New York, full InfoMall availability to the entire State, and finally testing the concept in selected sites elsewhere in the nation (Table 1). We began phase one--mall building in July, 1993.
After two years, we will have stocked the store with several new important re-usable technology and application pieces--a major addition to the inventory of available HPCC software systems. Most important is the novel technology transfer process illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. We will test this technology transfer process through the success of the delivered products, and the services, we put in place to enhance these and other HPCC software development efforts. This assertion will be studied and documented as a formal evaluation program of InfoMall.
What is the potential return on investment from InfoMall? HPCC promises improved performance and increased productivity for all sectors of the economy. HPCC may provide the competitive advantage that enables the nation to become a leader, rather than a follower, in manufacturing. HPCC may mean the difference between gaining and losing the attention of the next generation of inner city children through novel and exciting opportunities opened up in education through communication networks and global interaction. These indirect benefits are difficult to quantify.
In a more direct measure, the Department of Commerce estimates the base HPCC industry will reach 250,000 jobs in the USA by the year 2000, and between 10,000 and 20,000 in New York State. InfoMall is in a position to shorten the development cycle for the HPCC software industry by several years, and create local and national job increases. Implementing InfoMall now will stimulate development and maintenance of a broader applications software base, and prevent job loss overseas of highly skilled professionals in the hardware industry.
The benefits from InfoMall are directly dual-use. Military and civilian software require the same HPCC software development process, and sharing of re-usable technology and application pieces. Rome Laboratory, whose primary mission is Information Technologies, plays a major role in InfoMall and ensures and enhances its dual-use character.
InfoMall has a window of opportunity to exploit HPCC while the U.S. is the technology leader. InfoMall will succeed because it includes all the critical civilian and military components--basic and applied research, potential HPCC product users, HPCC system vendors and integrators, small and large businesses, and economic development agencies. It builds on the lessons of one of the largest HPCC technology transfer programs - ACTION - in the nation. It has put together a team of unrivaled capabilities to implement the process of Figure 2. InfoMall supports both high-performance computing and communications in both facilities and expertise of participants; includes both civilian and military organizations for technology development and use; includes both small and large businesses; offers all the technology, education and business support needed by entrepreneurs; and includes research, product development, marketing, integration and consulting components of HPCC computer and communication companies. InfoMall requires many different organizations and programs, but focuses all efforts on the most difficult problem, that of developing commercial HPCC software systems.
InfoMall is directed by Geoffrey Fox, with NPAC at Syracuse University as the lead organization. Fox has led HPCC software development for more than ten years, and he and NPAC have pioneered the innovative ACTION industrial outreach program on which lessons InfoMall is based. InfoMall is a model of the virtual organization of the future in software engineering for both defense and industry. "Virtual corporations" made up of software teams, dynamically and flexibly defined according to the task at hand, will have the required resources and innovative approaches to compete favorably with their largest competitors, both nationally and internationally.
HPCC is a very important set of technologies which has yet to realize its promise of maintaining and increasing U.S. economic competitiveness as well as improving the overall quality of life. InfoMall is designed to accelerate and aid the production of HPCC software and systems, the critical bottleneck in the deployment of HPCC technologies. InfoMall will jump-start the HPCC software industry. More available HPCC applications will support the sale of more HPCC hardware systems. Correspondingly, more productized HPCC software components and a larger commercial base of installed high speed networks and parallel computers will motivate the development of yet more HPCC applications. In this way, InfoMall starts the exponential growth required to mainstream HPCC with corresponding benefits to the nation.
InfoMall takes advantage of a major two year experiment, ACTION, in New York State described in Section 2.2.1. It makes further use of the extensive experience of the InfoMall partners who bring unrivaled expertise in all aspects of HPCC. The partners individual qualifications are summarized in Section 2.2.3. Their functionality is illustrated in Figure 1 showing the different stores offered to InfoMall shoppers.
Our collaborative team approach is further described in Section 2.2.2. Table 2 describes precisely the roles of each partner in terms of the nine InfoMall program elements described in detail in the corresponding Sections 2.3.1 to 2.3.9. Section 3.0 contains our plan of work for the programs described in Section 2.3. The heart of InfoMall is InfoTeam and the associated HPCC software systems development. InfoMall is represented by over 25 projects in Section 2.3.3 that we are using to produce dual-use HPCC InfoWare products over a one or two year time period. These products both provide a major set of base HPCC product stores in the mall, and stress and help develop the other InfoMall programs. Section 2.3.1 describes the major facilities available to develop and demonstrate user products. Section 2.3.2 describes the InfoTech activity illustrated in Figure 2 which is essential for evaluating, developing and integrating technologies to a form that can be used by software teams.
Section 2.3.4, 2.3.5 and 2.3.6 describe the Mall service stores; outreach (InfoMarket), training and consulting (InfoSchool), and integration which are specific to HPCC. In Section 2.3.7, we describe the other critical but non-HPCC specific high technology support available in InfoMall. The overall management and other central Mall services are described in Section 2.3.8. InfoMall is proposed as an HPCC deployment project that can be scaled from New York throughout the nation. Critical for this is the evaluation group headed by Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and Sterling Software. This is described in Section 2.3.9 and will both help InfoMall monitor its progress and document its methodology and lessons learned.
InfoMall is focused on a single technology (HPCC) but has the necessary broad collaboration--academia, industry, military, economic development--to effectively create and support the HPCC software industry.
2.2.1 ACTION and Lessons Learned
The mission of ACTION is to introduce and integrate HPCC into New York State Industry. This involves the development of industrial applications on parallel machines, industry access to the latest HPCC technology, and education and training programs.
ACTION is nearing the end of its second year of State funding which involves major operating ($640K/year) and equipment (approximately $1.25M/year) support. These resources are augmented by industry funding through development programs and deep discounts on hardware. These major resources provide a critical intellectual (expertise and experience), equipment and fiscal (matching funds) base for InfoMall. ACTION was originally designed by analogy to Fox's experience at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in developing parallel computing applications in an academic and laboratory environment. InfoMall builds on and makes major modification to this approach for the much harder problem of "real-world" HPCC software development. InfoMall is based on lessons from three major ACTION activities--a state-wide industry survey; a long range strategic plan and specific industrial projects.
ACTION surveyed fifty different industry, education and government possibilities for HPCC and classified them into 17 application categories shown in Table 3. HPCC technology was found to be essentially universally applicable and provide critical competitive advantage (industry), improve learning for a broad range of students (education), and provide more efficient and productive defense and civilian operation for government. Further, existing HPCC demonstrations in academia or laboratory settings had already developed the basic algorithms and approach. In contrast, real world HPCC opportunities were typically not being pursued for reasons that included the intrinsic difficulties in HPCC software development; and cultural and fiscal difficulties in potential HPCC user organizations. Further, most opportunities involved integration of communications with computing for large scale information systems. However, the National HPCC initiative concentrates on scientific and engineering simulation, which is important and very suitable for HPCC but not the major market share for current mainstream computing and future HPCC applications.
InfoMall addresses these issues by involving software development teams directly, and by using a multifaceted outreach with the consortia of HPCC consumers to provide a critical mass to warrant and fund particular HPCC products. Finally, the InfoMall partners, facilities, technologies and products (Sec. 2.3.3) are well balanced between communication and computing. Our ACTION strategic plan details these lessons, and motivated us to bring together the many skills of the partners that led directly to InfoMall and its programs described in the following Sections. ACTION provides InfoMall the facilities, structure, organization, and projects to facilitate the rapid start of the new InfoMall deployment project.
The InfoTech activity (Sec. 2.3.2) is designed to fill the gap identified in the ACTION strategic plan between technology research and technology users and providers. CRPC in a limited area, and InfoMall more broadly address the need to develop and integrate emerging HPCC technologies so that they can indeed be used by software teams. This activity is rarely funded (or performed) in traditional (academic) research. We believe that rapid integration of HPCC technologies requires a significant InfoTech activity.
ACTION has set up several projects which can be considered as pilots for the HPCC product development and small business outreach proposed for InfoMall. These projects involve NPAC staff scientists collaborating with HPCC technology and application staff in industry; projects involving large organizations include several with IBM PPS, Martin Marietta and Rome Laboratory. NPAC also has a major activity developing a parallel transient stability analysis system for Niagara Mohawk--the local electrical utility. This provides capability for real time simulation in utility electrical transmission networks (section 2.3.3.2.13). Our survey, and an environmental modeling project with IBM identified the importance of HPCC for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) whose dual-use opportunities include health care delivery analysis and optimization, as well as the command and control (data fusion) software needed for the Global Grid. ACTION is consequently developing an HPCC version of GRASS, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed public domain GIS system used by a number of federal agencies (sect 2.3.3.1.11). ACTION provided critical support to allow NPAC to fully participate in the planning and implementation of NYNET which provides critical communication facilities for InfoMall.
We also helped form MADIC--a major industrial consortium for multidisciplinary analysis and design--a key component of future manufacturing systems. MADIC involves companies such as Grumman, General Motors, Lockheed, Boeing, United Technologies and General Electric and has been established as NASA's advisory group for their computational aeroscience HPCC program. ACTION supports the ongoing operation of MADIC and plays a key role in InfoMall as a consortium of HPCC consumers in the manufacturing area (section 2.3.3.2.17).
Interactions with small businesses are a very successful part of ACTION which has helped them obtain and execute federal (SBIR) grants (Ultra, Syracuse Research Corporation (section 2.3.3.2.16), PGI, Coherent Research, Inc.), transferred key CRPC technology (High Performance Fortran to the Portland Group (PGi)), and given consulting and HPCC access (Sonnet Software) for porting of electromagnetic CAD software as part of ARPA's MIMIC program. These projects provide an initial suite of HPCC InfoMall activities which mold its design and initial implementation.
2.2.2 InfoMall--The Collaborators
As shown in Figures 1 and 2, InfoMall does not "throw technologies over the fence" but rather has set up the bridges for HPCC technology implementation by using the necessary partnerships to allow "fragile," difficult to use hardware and software to pass in small steps from one type of organization to another. The roles of these partnerships have been summarized in Figure 1 which shows their stores in the Mall grouped into seven major areas--InfoTech (research) Community; InfoTeam divided into two parts corresponding to the software and systems teams in large organizations and small businesses; InfoMarket consisting of integration and consulting organizations as well as marketing arms of vendors; InfoMall facilities represented by the HPCC vendors; InfoSchool and other Mall support services. Many of the InfoMall partners fall into more than one category but for clarity, we have adopted this simple classification in Figure 1. Table 2 and the following Sections of Section 2 spell out the partner activities more precisely.
Note it is deliberate that we do not directly include either the worldwide user or research community as InfoMall partners. As shown in Figure 2, InfoMall gathers the best technology with an international reach; it designs and delivers the HPCC products for a world market. Thus, the research community is represented by InfoTech which gathers, integrates, validates and develops technologies from disparate sources. HPCC consumers are, of course, critical to InfoMall but we use marketing, integration and consulting components of InfoMall partners to reach these users. Users are critical both initially to define requirements and finally to purchase products. This loose linkage of worldwide users and research to a locally (initially New York State) focused set of partners is illustrated in Figure 2. Figures 1 and 2 imply links between the various InfoMall partners and consumers. These are described in Section 2.3.4 under InfoMall's outreach program.
2.2.3 Qualifications of InfoMall Partners
InfoMall is designed to be a scalable organization that can respond rapidly to new opportunities by changing membership. The present program plan is based on contributions from 25 major partners. This Section provides a short description each major partner, which are presented alphabetically.
Abrams/Gentile Entertainment, Inc. (AGE) was founded in 1986 to pursue a range of entertainment products and services. The firm developed and licensed the PowerGlove, a Virtual Reality input device widely used for consumer video games. AGE products have generated more than $400 million in revenue, and the firm has produced more than 26 hours of television. AGE involvement in InfoMall includes use of HPCC in theme parks, low-cost consumer virtual reality systems and the edutainment areas described in Sec. 2.3.3.2.8. AGE links InfoMall to leading consumer entertainment and education software companies.
Booz, Allen & Hamilton (BA&H) is a management and technology consulting firm that employs more than 5,000 individuals at 20 separate sites throughout the country; the firm has annual revenues of $635M. BA&H staff has experience in using a broad range of high-performance computing technologies for large database analysis, image and signal processing, free text processing, and network analysis. In InfoMall, BA&H provides business and marketing support, as well as a unique link to a large number of current clients in the insurance, financial services and marketing areas. BA&H will also lead the evaluation program.
Computer Applications and Software Engineering (CASE) Center was established at Syracuse University in 1983 as a part of a New York State economic development program of regional Centers of Advanced Technology. The CASE Center receives $1M annually from the state, and it typically generates more than $3M annually in industrial matching funds. CASE Center research activities include projects in multimedia applications, software engineering, and scientific modeling. As a partner in InfoMall, the CASE Center provides business support, incubator space and computer facilities.
Center for Research in Parallel Computation (CRPC) is an NSF Science and Technology Center devoted to developing the software and algorithms that make parallel computing usable. CRPC is led by Ken Kennedy at Rice University; other major institutions involved are Caltech, Syracuse University, University of Tennessee and the DoE laboratories at Argonne and Los Alamos. In InfoMall, CRPC leads the InfoTech program; this is an extension of the existing CRPC technology dissemination program.
Cornell University participates in InfoMall with contributions from four groups: the Theory Center, the Computer Science faculty, Cornell Medical, and the Center for Applied Mathematics. The Theory Center operates one of four major NSF Supercomputer centers; it serves 2300 users from 150 institutions nationwide. The Theory Center contributes to InfoMall's excellent facilities (described in Sec. 2.3.1) accessed by the ATM NYNET link, and its links to users and the other three NSF supercomputer centers provide ready access to international HPCC technology (for InfoTech) and potential consumers. InfoSchool (Sec. 2.3.5) makes use of significant user outreach experience at the Cornell Theory Center. The Cornell Computer Science faculty currently is involved in networking research, including Isis and the follow-on distributed computing software Horus. The major GIODE project led by Kodak is partnered by Cornell Medical, which has world-class expertise in radiographic diagnosis and computer radiography for intensive care units. The interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell will develop dynamic system simulation technologies (see Sec. 2.3.3.1.7) for InfoTech.
Central New York Technology Development Organization (CNYTDO) is an independent, non-profit corporation that supports both emerging businesses and existing firms that depend upon innovation and technology to grow and remain competitive. CNYTDO is funded in part by the New York State Technology Development Organization (TDO) program, which is intended to accelerate the creation and growth of technology-based businesses (two other regional TDOs are involved in the InfoMall project). In InfoMall, the CNYTDO participates in outreach and marketing activities.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is active in HPCC technologies, with major efforts in both MIMD and SIMD equipment. DEC participation in InfoMall includes major facilities (Gigaswitch, Alpha cluster, DECmpp at NPAC) and proactive marketing support. The latter will include joint sponsorship of InfoMall workshops for industry on selected topics.
IBM Power Parallel Systems (IBM PPS) develops high-performance, UNIX-based parallel computing hardware for large-scale technical and commercial information problems. IBM PPS incorporates the strengths of three IBM Divisions -- Research, Advanced Workstations and Systems, and Enterprise Systems -- which together have extensive experience in the design, deployment and use of computers for large-scale applications. IBM PPS participates in InfoMall through facilities (described in Section 2.3.1); technical development staff, who partner on product development; and marketing staff, who assist in outreach efforts.
IBM Federal Systems Company (IBM FSC) in Owego, NY has approximately 3,000 employees with 60 active programs supplying systems and systems integration services for the U.S. government. IBM FSC programs include spaceborne, airborne, ground based, underwater and surface ship applications for both DoD and NASA. In InfoMall, IBM FSC participates in spin-off activities as part of an ongoing program that includes major initiatives in computer integrated manufacturing and automation for the U.S. Postal Service.
Integrated Systems Solutions Corporation (ISSC) is an IBM services company that currently has 25,000 employees and is growing rapidly; it offers a range of services including system operations (outsourcing), system integration, application development, consulting, networking, and business recovery services. In InfoMall, ISSC facilitates both marketing and delivery of HPCC products to new and existing application areas.
Isis Distributed Systems Inc. is a software supplier based in Ithaca, NY, that provides technology used in banking/brokerage applications, advanced telecommunications networks, VLSI fabrication, and a wide variety of other settings. Major users include the New York Stock Exchange, Iridium (the world-wide cellular telephone system), Sematech, HiperD (next generation of the AEGIS system), and the French Air Traffic Control System. Through InfoMall, the company assists participating firms in applying Isis technologies in advanced manufacturing and product development systems.
Kodak is a world leader in images and image processing. Kodak participates in InfoMall as part of a the Global Imagery On-Demand (GIODE) project, which is described fully in Section 2.3.3. The GIODE project involves the four separate Kodak divisions described below.
The Kodak Commercial & Government Systems (C&GS) Division integrates commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) components for imaging information systems at distributed locations, into custom and specialized imaging applications and equipment for the Department of Defense. C&GS currently generates more than $50 million annually in dual-use imaging technology and services to the federal government and other customers. In InfoMall, Kodak C&GS serves as the manager of the GIODE superstore.
The Kodak CD-Imaging (CD-I) Division provides COTS hardware and software components for dual-use data storage, retrieval and transmission with the highest-available image quality and long-term reliability. In October 1993, CD-I will launch the Kodak Picture Exchange, which will be the first on-line image information service that links buyers and sellers of stock photography via public telecommunications networks. In InfoMall, CD-I will provide Image Library technology, which will be extended into the HPCC domain for dual-use, on-demand, high-performance image applications.
The Kodak Image Telecommunication Center (ITC) is chartered to define and implement image transmission architectures and standards enabled by advances in telecommunications. Kodak ITC leadership and technical abilities were key to the successful demonstration of low-cost image delivery, storage and retrieval using Kodak COTS technology via a nationwide network during the Transcontinental ISDN Project held in November 1992. In InfoMall, Kodak ITC serves as the network liaison, integrating NYNET ATM connectivity for GIODE demonstrations.
The Kodak Health Sciences Division (HSD) is a multidisciplinary organization focused on meeting the changing needs of both private and public health care facilities by providing integrated imaging solutions that save lives and health care costs. HSD products such as the Ektascan Image Link System significantly improve image consistency for intensive care via computed radiography. In InfoMall, HSD provides the integration of Cornell University radiology expertise with state-of-the-art computer radiography technology for GIODE demonstrations.
Martin Marietta Ocean and Radar Systems Division (MM OSRD) (formerly General Electric OSRD) in Syracuse, NY, has significant experience in the development and deployment of real-time computing systems for billion-dollar programs such as the AN/BSY-2 for the Seawolf submarine. Ongoing projects relevant to InfoMall include an effort to enable dual-use of the real time system services software from military programs (operating system, networking, data management) in varied time-critical commercial applications.
MasPar HPCC SIMD systems are a key component of InfoMall facilities. In InfoMall, MasPar involvement includes dual-use applications to signal processing and other areas. In addition, the broad collaboration in InfoMall will be exploited by MasPar to investigate heterogeneous computing solutions involving one or more MasPar systems combined, if necessary, with MIMD capabilities.
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Consortium (MCC) is mega-consortium that includes more than 80 industrial members. Results from the ongoing MCC Carnot Project will be used to provide access to, and maintain consistency of, data distributed in heterogeneous database environments in the GIODE project. In addition, MCC also provides experience in the Enterprise Integration Network (EINet) project, which aims to commercialize high-speed internet services via the national information infrastructure.
Mohawk Valley Applied Technology Commission (MVATC) is a State-funded regional TDO for the Mohawk Valley region (Utica/Rome, NY and vicinity) that pursues a program similar to the CNYTDO described above. MVATC will participate in InfoMall outreach activities.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center leads a NASA High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program project in four dimensional data assimilation. The team is formed of personnel from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in the Data Assimilation Office (DAO) and the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch (ACDB), from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and from Syracuse University. The team consists of Earth scientists and mathematicians, with extensive experience in developing state-of-the-art Earth system models and assimilation techniques, and computer scientists, with extensive experience in developing large-scale applications on parallel computing systems.
New York City Partnership (NYCP) is the State-funded regional TDO for New York City and the surrounding region including Long Island. This area includes 1,700 existing software companies. NYCP will participate in InfoMall outreach and support programs for software teams. In particular, NYCP is initiating a Software Diversification Project (SDP) focused on redeployment (spin-off) of defense software for civilian use. InfoMall will hold joint workshops with the SDP and integrate projects as appropriate.
Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) was established in 1987 at Syracuse University. Under the leadership of Geoffrey Fox, NPAC addresses both basic research and development as well as the real-world HPCC outreach exhibited by the ACTION program (described in Sec. 2.2.1) and by the present proposal. Basic research and development efforts at NPAC are federally funded, and are centered on the CRPC collaboration (High Performance Fortran, Parallel I/O, distributed computing and runtime libraries are current major projects). NPAC employs 15 administrative/technical staff members, 10 Ph.D. applications/research scientists, and approximately 50 graduate students. NPAC staff also collaborates regularly with Syracuse University faculty in computer science, engineering and the sciences.
NYNEX is a regional Bell Operating Company that participates in InfoMall through both its Science and Technology (S&T) and New York Telephone divisions. NYNEX S&T conducts research in the areas of high speed communications, expert systems, multimedia communications and video technologies. A particular focus has been the use of high speed networks to support medical services both from the perspective of decision support systems and cost reduction potential. In InfoMall, NYNEX will plan and implement NYNET, a gigabit network linking leading research institutions within New York State for the purpose of furthering research in fields related to the advancement of communication technologies and the development of new applications.
NYSERNet is a non-profit corporation established in 1986 to advance effective electronic network access throughout New York State. NYSERNet affiliates include more than 200 organizations, ranging from large research centers and universities, to small public libraries and K-12 schools. In InfoMall, NYSERNet will design and support electronic access to information, facilities and InfoSchool educational modules.
ORACLE is a leading independent database vendor and a pioneer of commercial parallel database systems. ORACLE is represented in InfoMall by the major NPAC facility currently used to evaluate this technology in an army data fusion program--ASAS--where it is essentially acting as a backend to a Geographic Information System. ORACLE provides outreach for InfoMall to potential parallel database users through e ORACLE MPP marketing group.
Rome Laboratory (RL) is the designated Air Force Center (superlab) for Command, Control and Communications Technologies. The RL mission includes research and development of information and communications networking technologies that enable the management of forces on a national and global basis; applications of HPCC technologies are of special interest. RL plays a key role in InfoMall as a conduit of defense needs and requirements. Further, RL provides an environment to demonstrate spin-on deployment of InfoMall systems that were motivated initially by civilian applications. A major focus of RL InfoMall dual-use activities will be the Global Grid initiative for which NYNET provides an excellent test facility.
Syracuse Research Corporation(SRC) is a non-for profit, independent multidisciplinary research and development organization conducting cost-effective contract studies in a broad range of applied sciences. Serving both government and industry since 1957, SRC is a recognized leader in defense electronics systems, chemical and biological research and data base services and technology transfer. NPAC is collaborating with SRC in the development and implementation of computational electromagnetics techniques on massively parallel computing architectures.
Sterling Software is a major worldwide supplier of software products and services for three markets: systems software; electronic data interchange software and network services; and Federal government professional services. Sterling employs 2,800 individuals, markets over 50 software products, and has a 1993 revenue forecast of $400M. In InfoMall, Sterling Software will be involved initially in the evaluation project described in Sec. 2.3.9. In addition, Sterling uses InfoMall to obtain HPCC technologies and integrate them (spin-on) with custom software and databases to develop next-generation defense C2I (command, control and intelligence) information systems, battlefield simulation systems, digital cartography systems and real-time signal and image processing.
Tripos Associates is a leading supplier of chemical computation software. The company's comprehensive SYBYL molecular modeling system has more than 1,000 users worldwide. The InfoMall project described in Section 2.3.3.2.10 is the responsibility of software teams located in St. Louis and Syracuse.
Ultra Corp. provides technical, analytic, and programmatic solutions for data acquisition, processing, communications, display, and control systems. Applications include DoD Command, Control, Communications, Computing, and Intelligence (C4I), sensor and sensor cueing, and architectures for complex and survivable "systems of systems." Ultra has more than 10 years experience with HPCC technologies and is forging new paths to conversion, dual-use, and commercialization of U.S.-Government developed technologies and system engineering expertise. Ultra's main office in Boston has just been augmented by a branch opened in Syracuse to work with InfoMall, NYNET, and Rome Laboratory.
InfoMall offers the necessary services to support software teams develop and integrate diverse HPCC technologies. InfoMall offers HPCC consumers education and information on existing and potential HPCC products. InfoMall develops important HPCC products to test its services and demonstrate value of HPCC and InfoMall.
The InfoMall partners collaborate in various programs which can be considered as the different shops in the mall. We are opening the following basic types of shops in InfoMall: facilities, enabling technologies support, and HPCC product development; outreach; education, training, and consulting; other services; central mall services; and evaluation.
InfoMall has excellent state-of-the-art facilities centered on and integrated by NYNET - a commercial ATM based wide area network linking local facilities at the Cornell Theory Center, NPAC, and Rome Laboratory. HPCC resources available via NYNET includes parallel machines, clusters of high-performance workstations, visualization servers, high speed local networks and large backend databases. Our national contacts, coordinated by CRPC, offer InfoMall access to the largest configurations of all important parallel machines. These are highlighted by the 1024-node CM-5 at Los Alamos and the Intel delta (becoming a Paragon) at Caltech.
NYNET will initially offer multiple OC3 (150 Mbit/sec) links in October 1993 but as commercial technology evolves, multigigabit performance will be realized. The current performance limit comes from availability of commercial ATM interfaces to the supercomputers and networks at NPAC and Cornell. Both organizations are committed to upgrade their internal network capability as soon as NYNET and the interfaces warrant it. We also anticipate that NYNET will be extended from it upstate corridor to include the whole state. InfoMall supports collaboration technologies, including NYNEX's SHUTTLE and MEDOS systems, to enable the linkage of InfoMall components together, and form a "virtual corporation" if needed to develop an HPCC activity involving several distinct organizations machines.
The Cornell Theory Center, currently has two major parallel facilities. The capabilities of the 64 node IBM SP1 machine are significantly enhanced by two large RS/6000 based clusters. The SP-1 is particularly suitable for irregular problems--such as the electric power simulation discussed in Section 2.3.3.2.13--for which an RS/6000 node will perform excellently. The SP-1 supports both loosely coupled distributed and parallel computing and InfoMall has access to both production software from IBM PPS and experimental systems from IBM Research . The Theory Center has a large 128 node Kendall Square KSR-1 machine which implements shared memory with its innovative Allcache architecture. It is an important goal of InfoMall to understand which industrial applications either need or can benefit from a shared memory. This gives several advantages to the programming environment which must be traded against difficulties in scaling to large systems and in cost performance. The SP-1 will be upgraded to a major facility --a 512 node configuration of IBM's follow on machine.
NPAC's facility is built to support initial research and development rather than large scale production. Thus, NPAC offers a richer collection of parallel architectures but in much smaller configurations than Cornell. NPAC offers four MIMD architectures; 32 node CM-5 from Thinking Machines; 16 node Intel Touchstone; 8 node IBM SP1; and a 64 node nCUBE2. The latter, with a 200 gigabyte parallel I/O backend, is largely devoted to hosting one of the few major installations of parallel ORACLE (version 7.0). Clearly, such technology is central to the many, if not the majority, of large scale HPCC information systems. The nCUBE2 is very reliable but NPAC intends to boost ORACLE performance by implementing it on the SP-1 and nCUBE3 when available. NPAC has a major research activity developing software (High Performance Fortran and C++) support for heterogeneous computing and two SIMD MasPar MP-1's (DECmpp) are integrated with our MIMD capability. NPAC also features RS/6000 and Alpha based workstation clusters. The latter are interconnected by Digital's interesting high performance gigaswitch.
InfoMall thus offers a microcosm of the very best communication and computing resources which are funded largely by NYNEX and New York State. We believe InfoMall facilities will be able to support all important HPCC development projects including those described in Section 2.3.3.
2.3.2 InfoTech: The first step toward commercialization
HPCC works -- in the laboratory. Much academic and laboratory research has demonstrated the essential ideas (such as algorithms, compilers, etc.) for the HPCC applications required in industry. Generally, these academic projects are not directly usable by the software teams which produce HPCC products. The solution to this problem of transitioning key HPCC technologies is the InfoTech or warehouse manager concept. The InfoTech principle shall collect and inventory re-usable technology pieces (RTPs) for use as generic HPCC components. Using as an example the Global Imagery On-Demand (GIODE) concept shown in Figure 3, the RTPs form the basis for re-usable application pieces (RAPs), which are integrated sets of RTPs specifically aimed at a domain specific national challenge application, (e.g. Defense Imagery Intelligence).
To the benefit of GIODE and the other InfoTeams, the InfoTech function has been successfully pioneered by the Center for Research in Parallel Computing (CRPC). CRPC acts as the InfoTech principal for InfoMall. InfoTech responsibility encompasses initial technology extraction via world-class research centers, to final demonstration and validation of vendor neutral and interoperable RTPs. Hence, the InfoTech "seal of approval" certifies each re-usable technology piece (RTP) as an HPCC building block which is available as supportable technology in the mainstream. Once approved, the RTP is placed on the shelf, for a specified term (shelf-life), as a stable platform providing the head start for new businesses to produce commercial products. InfoTech experts gather and classify technologies; develop a methodology for the decomposition of applications into component technologies (a generalized library function to maintain the RTP inventory); develop and maintain metrics and benchmarks for systematic evaluation; and promote and develop open interfaces to allow integration of technologies. Finally, InfoTech serves an important dissemination and education role as a resource for other InfoMall team members.
Real-World Successes of the InfoTech Process: We can illustrate this process with two CRPC projects. Dongarra and collaborators have systematized a collection of sparse matrix solvers which are only discussed individually in research papers and presented them for the general user as a book of generic templates. In another project, Rice and Syracuse were able to develop and test a collection of largely known parallel compiler technologies so that in two years, NPAC had produced a prototype High Performance Fortran (HPF) compiler. This compiler has already been licensed by a small business (The Portland Group). The process also involved integrating academic researchers and vendors in the very successful HPF forum, which produced in one year agreed upon industry standards for the HPF language. This process is now being repeated--with CRPC leadership--for message passing systems, parallel runtime libraries and base compiler infrastructure.
The Initial InfoTech Inventory (HPCC Off-the-Shelf -- HOTS):
In general InfoTech's inventory of HPCC RTPs includes four basic components: hardware platforms, software platforms, bitway interfaces, and infrastructure services. These components are inventoried and supported in the same manner as industry standard components (i.e. removable drives, CD-ROMS, spreadsheets, ethernet cards, etc.) are used today by the mainstream consumer. InfoTech provides these components to builders (InfoTeams) of sophisticated HPCC applications products (InfoWare) which are then sold in the growing HPCC hardware marketplace.
The Hardware Platforms: Hardware is supplied by HPCC vendors and includes parallel, distributed, and heterogeneous computing systems, and high performance communications networks. Many of the most important HPCC vendors in the nation are partners to InfoMall and the InfoMall state of the art facilities are described in Section 2.3.1.
The Software Platforms: Enabling software technologies range from low-level software packages such as communication libraries to high level languages and tools for developing HPCC applications. Examples of enabling software technologies include message passing libraries, the High Performance Fortran Compiler, and parallel database software (e.g. ORACLE version 7.0). Algorithms or templates are high level solution methods used to solve application problems. Important enabling algorithms include SCALAPACK, a scalable linear algebra package developed by the CRPC, sparse matrix solvers, mesh generators, particle dynamics templates, and optimization templates.
The Bitway Interfaces: High performance communication enabling technologies include a diverse set of network environments (e.g. ATM, HIPPI, SONET, DQDB, FDDI) and transport protocols (e.g. Nectar, Ultranet, VMTP, XTP, SAFENET, NETBLT). Integration technologies are essential to developing applications on distributed and heterogeneous computing networks, and providing required levels of performance, programmability, and portability between systems. Important software tools and environments providing computing and communication systems integration include High Performance Fortran, AVS, Schedule, Linda, Express, PICL, and PVM/HeNCE.
The Infrastructure Services: At the higher layers, high performance infrastructure services components, such as the Kodak Image Library and the MCC Carnot heterogeneous database environment are stocked and maintained by InfoTech. Our vision for the insertion of these critical services into the mainstream is shown in Figure 4. These components are described below as the base technologies for the Reusable Application Pieces (RAPs) of the major InfoMall GIODE project. Multimedia collaboration technologies include MEDOS (described in Section 2.3.3.1.3) and The NYNEX Shuttle. This set of components shows great promise for revitalizing our national information infrastructure (NII) and its related DoD extension (Global Grid) for dual-use applications such as medicine, education, environmental monitoring and crisis management.
2.3.3 HPCC Product Development
2.3.3.1 RTPs Re-Usable Technology Pieces
2.3.3.1.1 Kodak: Kodak Image Library Technology
This technology has taken on two forms, each being a "sister program", leveraging technology development from the other to meet the needs of a specific market segment. First, is the Kodak Picture Exchange (Kodak PX). As a viable commercial example of a global imagery on-demand application, the Kodak PX provides a premier, centralized on-line imaging service. One call over the public network provides instant visual access to high quality color images from around the world. Beginning in September 1993, global users of commercial stock photography will have access to hundreds of thousands of images via the public narrow band telecommunications infrastructure. Using the power of visual keywords and full text retrieval, the Kodak PX user gains the advantage of true imagery on-demand in the marketplace of stock photography. Once enabled in an HPCC broad band network environment, high resolution and high performance will combine to make high quality color images available on-demand in real time.
Second, the Kodak Commercial Image Library(CIL) provides an on-line imagery and image information repository for distributed servers used for import, management, and export of digital images to be used by a particular organization. The features of import/export allow the "image librarian" to manage the repository in a disciplined and automated manner, while still allowing users to connect to their "production" environments for CD authoring and high quality hard copy production. When available as a commercial product in early 1994, the CIL will meet the image information management needs of a small enterprise, by supporting a network enabled (shared) CD-ROM juke-box. This provides the library infrastructure required to manage the import, storage and export of up to 50,000 images (at 35 mm resolution). Again, the GIODE objective is to leverage this advantage by extending CIL technology into an HPCC RTP.
2.3.3.1.2 MCC Carnot Technology
The Carnot Project is developing a flexible framework for supporting inter-operation of heterogeneous software components in an open, standard, distributed, computational setting. The Carnot Project provides a project management framework, within which a variety of independently developed RTP technologies applicable to component inter-operation, can be brought to bear on the heterogeneous access problem.
The principal components of the Carnot framework are shown in Figure 5. These service categories are broadly structured in terms of mediating elements and tools for constructing such elements in both automated and semiautomated manners. The infrastructure service interfaces or "glue" points to other InfoMall RTPs and RAPs are documented in terms of the User Interface (UI) and the Application Programming Interface (API).
The Communication Services layer implements and integrates various communication platforms that may occur within an enterprise. Such platforms are considered to provide functionality up to the application layer of the (ISO) Open Systems Interconnection. The Support Services layer implements basic application layer services that are fundamental to all other aspects of the Carnot framework. These include: ISO ACSE and ROSE; CCITT Directory Service (X.500) and message system (X.400); and MIT Kerberos authentication service.
The Distribution Services layer introduces relaxed transaction processors that manage information consistency and integrity with very flexible transaction primitives. This layer also provides a distributed communicating agent facility that interacts with client applications. The Semantic Services layer provides a global or enterprise-wide view of all the resources integrated within a Carnot-supported system. The semantic services consists of a suite of tools for enterprise modeling, model integration, data cleaning, and knowledge discovery. The Access Services layer provides mechanisms for manipulating the other four Carnot services. These services include a 2D and 3D model-based visualization facility and an object oriented deductive computing environment that is integrated with C++ and optimized for recursive query processing. This technology will be readily extended to the proposed management and transfer of images, allowing image repositories to be maintained autonomously. Prototypes of Carnot technology are used today at several businesses and Department of Defense locations, but the challenge of applying Carnot to the HPCC realm remains to be addressed. The pay-off for overcoming this challenge shall be a RTP for use as the baseline for required HPCC infrastructure services in the general Global Grid/NII environment as well as the three specific RAPs.
2.3.3.1.3 NYNEX: Collaboration Technologies
In an effort to support real-time collaboration between professionals engaged in multimedia collaborative work sessions, NYNEX has developed a body of software, MEDOS, which provides an environment in which multimedia communications can be supported. This environment allows users to interact and collaborate with one another while sharing, displaying and manipulating various media types such as text, data, images, video and audio. In effect, users in separate locations "converse" within a multimedia conference as if they were seated around a conference table. In order to provide this communications environment, MEDOS has been designed to provide the following essential facilities: Session Management sets up and manages the multimedia environment for users; Transport Management provides and controls physical transport facilities; Billing/Call Detail tracks, summarizes and analyzes network usage on a user-by-user or session-by-session basis; Operations Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) provides overall control and status of system/network activity. As an InfoMall activity, we are pursuing further development activities to enhance this program. MEDOS must be expanded to support a redundant architecture to insure availability on a reliable basis at all items. MEDOS also needs to have a capability for linking multiple processors which are all running the MEDOS software. Work is also underway to define the requirements for providing MEDOS-like functionality in the public network through ATM technology.
The second part of this project concerns enhancements in functionality and target hardware for the MBS Application Toolkit. This allows application developers to develop end-user multimedia communication application RAPs with relative ease, and with significant reduction in development time and effort. It provides a mechanism to integrate access to MEDOS network services into applications, requiring minimal knowledge of the inner workings of the MBS network operating environment. This set of RTPs form a library of support modules designed for applications that access network-based data which is distributed and composed of different media, which support simultaneous access by multiple users, and which support collaboration between them.
2.3.3.1.4 Martin Marietta: High Performance/High Density Computing
Military surveillance and sensor systems, such as those produced by Martin Marietta Ocean Systems, rely heavily on high performance floating point processors. Vast quantities of data must be processed in a short time interval (e.g. beamforming) so that countermeasures can be executed in a timely fashion. Space constraints within the ships and submarines necessitates the use of high density packaging techniques which includes modules.
Multichip module technology can reduce the cost of commercial and military systems. The initial production costs are reduced since numerous duplicated processing steps are removed. Additionally, the volume reduction reduces the cost of the support equipment. Subsequently, the operating costs are reduced since less power is used and the systems are more reliable. Martin Marietta has significant experience with design of multichip modules and access to the GE/IT High Density Interconnect multichip module technology. The goal of this pilot project is to create dual-use of multichip processing modules developed for military applications in the commercial marketplace. A necessary step in this process is to implement the module in a wider set of open standards and platforms to improve its commercial viability. A commercial quality board will be designed and fabricated, and available InfoTech compiler and message passing technology will be implemented by NPAC on the modules to provide a basic scalable high performance computing environment.
The multichip module that will be created as a result of this project can be utilized in both commercial and military applications (dual-use). The initial commercial application examined will be medical imaging equipment. This hardware-software module will be completed in the first year of an active project and integrated during the second year with the Real Time Computing Demonstration (Section 2.3.3.2.5) which will further enhance the product with HPCC application software.
2.3.3.1.5 IBM Owego: Scalable Software for the Execube Parallel Processor
The Execube processor, developed by IBM's Federal Systems Company (FSC) in Owego, NY, combines eight processors, four million bits of dynamic random access memory, and related communications support logic onto a single 50 MIPS chip using IBM's advanced semiconductor technology. This chip technology forms a basis for the development of scalable, massively parallel processing systems. IBM will make a prototype 512 processor Execube parallel processor system available to applications developers (via NYNET) through InfoMall. This associative processor will augment the SIMD and MIMD architectures already deployed in the InfoMall facilities (Sec. 2.3.1). A spin-off project could produce a high level parallel C++ language support for Execube--thus giving it a standard scalable software front end. This work will use CRPC expertise in the InfoTech Store which is collaborating with Gannon's group at Indiana on integrating High Performance C++ and Fortran.
A high-bandwidth interconnect structure ties each Execube chip to eight neighboring chips. This provides approximately 60 megabytes per second of external input/output. The Execube architecture supports operation in both single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) and multiple-instruction-multiple-data (MIMD) modes. Groups of processors may dynamically switch between SIMD and MIMD operation.
The Execube associative processor possesses obvious dual-use potential. Development work in the areas of multiple-target tracking, sensor fusion, and in-flight route planning for military aerospace applications can be applied to civilian applications such as aviation and air traffic control, and vehicle tracking and route planning for intelligent highway systems. FSC Owego has also explored image processing applications for Execube including optical character recognition, particle physics data analysis, medical imaging, and associated processing for automated postal address recognition and mail sorting.
A prototype library is available that allows applications to call vector and matrix operations based on the Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines (BLAS) standard. Most BLAS functions are available today, and a full implementation is planned. High level language support for the ADA language is currently provided. The addition of C++ language support would significantly ease the process of developing and porting non-military applications to the Execube architecture.
2.3.3.1.6 IBM Owego: Software Engineering Design Language
The Software Engineering Design Language (SEDL) is an executable specification language supported by a compiler that generates ADA source code from SEDL. This generation is implemented using equivalence the of SEDL to the compiler intermediate form. It can be used for rapid prototyping to validate requirements and for automatic generation of final (non-time critical) deliverable source code. We will make the SEDL language and tools available through InfoMall and leverage ARPA funds to add a parallel C++ code generation capability. One will be able to use C++ reuse libraries in analogy to current use of ADA reuse libraries with the SEDL compiler. Again, this spin-off project will utilize CRPC expertise through the InfoTech Store.
The Software Engineering Design Language (SEDL) is a specification and design language which is a strict superset of ADA. SEDL allows for the behavioral specification of subprograms eliminating the need to write ADA bodies for these subprograms. The SEDL language generalizes many ADA constructs. The package structure is generalized to include parameterized abstract data types and objects. Predefined anonymous data types such as sets, maps and lists are also part of the language with notation for the manipulation of these types. SEDL is being used to express software requirements for a large Navy contract both to insure correctness of the specification relative to the Navy's requirements and to automatically produce some of the deliverable ADA code.
2.3.3.1.7 Cornell Center for Applied Mathematics: DsTool for Dynamical Systems
DsTool is a program that provides an efficient user computational environment for the simulation and analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems. The program is modular, extensible and evolving. The goal is to provide the user an interface to a comprehensive set of algorithms that are available to study these systems. Nonlinear dynamical systems are ubiquitous throughout the sciences and engineering. Models for mechanical devices, electrical networks, chemical reactors, physiological and neural systems and fluid dynamics provide examples. DsTool "scales up" the computational methods used to discover universal phenomena in systems with few degrees of freedom. The types of calculations DsTool performs are well matched to the capabilities of new parallel computing environments, and DsTool has been ported to the IBM SP-1. The efficiency of its algorithms and user interface make it possible to perform extensive analyses of large, complex problems that are otherwise infeasible.
Industrial design problems often require one to construct systems with moderate numbers of degrees of freedom whose behavior meets performance criteria. This requires that one be able to analyze models efficiently. To give just one example, the suspension system of an automobile or a railroad vehicle can be represented by a nonlinear system with approximately 10 degrees of freedom and many design parameters. We will provide the design engineer with a computational tool that will describe as completely and automatically as possible the behavior of the system as a design is modified and its parameters modified.
2.3.3.1.8 NPAC/Mississippi State University: Parallel Grid Generation
This project will develop a software framework for generating grids (both structured and unstructured) on large MIMD systems. We will implement the framework for this system within a large library of software kernels for mapping and scheduling computation to associated parallel grid generation (PGG). The result will be a representative set of static and adaptive PGG codes that provide an interface between the National Common Geometry Engine (NCGG) and various parallel PDE solvers. The framework and the PGG codes can be developed concurenty with the National Grid Generation Engine. The National Grid is a major project at Mississippi State headed by Joe Thompson and involving major industrial collaborations in both the aerospace and automobile industries. NPAC's contribution is to develop parallel implementations of the National Grid which is currently restricted to sequential machines. The mapping and scheduling software kernels, and the PGG codes will be implemented both on distributed and shared memory MIMD systems with distributed and shared address spaces.
2.3.3.1.9 Rice/NPAC: FortranD and Extensions to High Performance Fortran
HPF is an international industry standard for data parallel Fortran. An extension of Fortran90, HPF supports single-threaded, global name space, loosely synchronous parallel computation. The main idea behind HPF is to provide a means to produce scalable, portable, and high-performance codes for MIMD and SIMD computers with non-uniform memory access costs. Portability of HPF codes means that the efficiency of the code is preserved for different machines with a comparable number of processors. Since HPF promises software investment protection, it is expected to trigger development of large scale industrial and scientific applications.
The definition of HPF is strongly influenced by the FortranD idea, a research language developed at Rice and Syracuse Universities. Syracuse University is an active member of the High Performance Forum, and the Fortran 90D compiler developed at Syracuse is in fact the first, pilot implementation of HPF. Recently, the compiler was licensed to PGI for a commercial implementation. In addition, Syracuse University developed a HPF applications benchmark suite.
2.3.3.1.10 NPAC: Integration Software for Parallel Systems
AVS, the Application Visualization System, is a widely available commercial visualization environment based on a dataflow model for scientific data visualization and process control. AVS incorporates advanced technologies in visualization software, graphics, networking, high performance systems, and industry standards into a single comprehensive visualization application software and development environment.
One feature of AVS is that it supports distributed computing. Modules in a given module network can either run on the same computer as the AVS kernel or they can run on remotely connected computers. In this model, AVS provides for heterogeneous computing support. Neither the AVS user nor the module writer need worry about varying data formats, communications, or synchronization. The parallel execution model supported by AVS is that modules that are connected in parallel have the potential to run concurrently. Although AVS does not provide support for parallel computing within the module, a specific module may use machine/language specific features to achieve such parallelism as data parallel or explicit message passing.
As one of core HPCC technologies, software integration will play an ever-growing important role in HPCC applications. We are exploring over the period of the last two years the AVS environment, both in the context of scientific visualization and also, more broadly, as an attractive paradigm for software integration in high performance distributed computing and parallel systems. Together with other system software such as PVM, AVS is being used as a candidate to integrate massively parallel processing modules (in data-parallel and/or explicit message passing paradigms), sequential or parallel I/O, system control, visualization, data processing and other computing services required by a HPCC application, into a highly interactive, heterogeneous, high performance computing environment.
2.3.3.1.11 NPAC: Parallel Geographic Information System
Large scale multidisciplinary problems combining information systems and numerical computing define a model for future information systems. Starting with large data sets and database technologies for storage and retrieval, high performance computation are used to turn data into information, then combine this information with simulation and decision support modules for understanding and managing complex systems relevant in industry and public policy.
Due to the importance of parallel GIS in a number of applications identified by NPAC's ACTION industry program, NPAC has instituted a major new project to develop a parallel GIS framework. We are developing a parallel version of public domain GRASS software with internal funds augmented by funds from IBM. We need to integrate this parallel GIS framework with database modules. We are using both the GRASS internal database and an interface to parallel ORACLE installed on NPAC's HPCC 64 node NCube2. This NCube2 system is fully equipped with parallel I/O and large backend disks capable of supporting 0.1 TeraBYTES of data.
2.3.3.1.12 NPAC: Parallel Database Technologies
The Parallel Database project in NPAC employs massively parallel nCUBE2 computer and Oracle's Parallel Server. This configuration was demonstrated to set the record transaction rates in the TPC-B database benchmark. The nCUBE2 platform offers not only the capability of multiple instances of the relational database server running independently and in parallel accessing the database while ensuring global data consistency, but also data partitioning schemes that allow the heavy I/O load generated by multiple instances to be served by a parallel, scalable I/O subsystem. The I/O performance is critical for the overall database engine performance. The nCUBE2 platform offers the most mature parallel I/O subsystem in the industry. The current NPAC configuration supports nearly 0.2 TB of the on-line, fast storage that can be accessed simultaneously by the array of 32 I/O processors. The data are then transmitted to the hypercube running actual RDBMS with as many as 50 instances of Oracle.
The current version of the Oracle Parallel server supports at best the OLTP applications. The multiple requests can be served concurrently by the server. The version more adequate for decision support applications will be installed by the end of 1993. This version (currently under beta-testing by Oracle) supports both types of parallelism frequently encountered in the database queries: the data parallelism, supported via parallel I/O subsystem. allows for independent processing of the portions of relational schemes, while functional parallelism allows for data pipelining between the database atomic operations. This technology, known as Parallel Data Query (PDQ), has been shown to be extremely effective in research database systems. In many cases the observed speedup was more than proportional to the number of server instances due to the memory caching of entire database. We expect similar performance benefits from the Oracle PDQ software.
The Parallel Database Server in NPAC operates in the client-server mode. A variety of configurations is possible. The server can run one or more copies of Oracle with variable number of instances. The copies can access different databases using the same parallel I/O subsystem. The client applications can be either sequential or parallel. In the later case, they can run on the nCUBE itself, either in the subcube running Oracle and utilizing its idle cycles, or in a separate subcube. In either case, the scalable interconnect supports the communication both within application and between application and the database server. Sequential application can run on any workstation, local or remote, and communicate directly with Parallel Database Server using a dedicated network link. The link supports standard Oracle SQL*Net protocol which implies that there is practically no restriction for the type of machines running client applications. With NYNet in place, the full power of the Parallel Database Server will be accessible for external users. Internally, the clients with high CPU demand can run on other parallel machines and communicate with the database server via fast internal networking backbone. Thus, NPAC offers a truly unique capability of supporting applications with both very high CPU and I/O requirements.
2.3.3.2 RAPs Re-Usable Application Pieces
2.3.3.2.1 Kodak/MCC: Commercial Imagery On-Demand
The concept for this first feasibility demonstration centers on a "commerce of images" via the NYNET. In the same manner as New York State Engineering and Research Network (NYSERNet) Internet services are provided today to the science and technical community of our nation's northeast region, this trial would demonstrate the feasibility of imagery on-demand provisioned as a high performance adjunct service to this community. As a demonstration of this concept, we propose to make images from the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, New York available to research consumers via the NYNET.
2.3.3.2.2 Kodak/MCC/Cornell: Medical Imagery On-Demand
The second feasibility demonstration for GIODE involves the integration of RAPs tailored to the medical imaging domain. Medical application research and evaluation will be conducted in conjunction with the Department of Radiology, Cornell University Medical School, and the Cornell Theory Center. X-ray, CT scans, and magnetic resonance images provide the physician with invaluable "windows" into the body of a patient. The effective use of medical images requires timely acquisition, analysis, display and retrieval. But as medical imaging grows in importance, the number of images and their complexity requires HPCC to adequately deliver this essential information to physicians.
We have chosen two areas where HPCC image processing technologies can be combined with GIODE to improve the quality and reduce the cost of medical service. The first example will use computer radiography (CR) images to detect catheters and disease in neonates and adult intensive care units (ICU). Currently there are 55,000 ICU beds and misplacement of catheters occurs in 20% of cases. Further, detection of pneumothoraxes (PTX) and effusions is very difficult even for a skilled radiologist. This use of image analysis to detect and track catheters or identify PTXs would be very valuable. The Cornell Hospital team will set up the necessary clinical experiments, while this project will develop the necessary Image Processing Algorithms (IPAs) to analyze up to 2K by 2K X-ray or CR images. Component IPA algorithms (RTPs) to be developed include correction of spatial variation in image intensity through use of internal and external markers; high-emphasis recursive filtering to delineate lung boundaries, heart and ribs; detection of local texture changes using local fractal dimensions and local gradient operators starting from edges of the lung and excluding the ribs and heart; region growing algorithms for segmentation; and assignment of tissue class based on a known data base.
The second example will use real time magnetic resonance (MR) imaging for the analysis of congenital heart disease. One percent of the 4 million children born each year in the U.S. have congenital heart disease. A significant number of these 40,000 children undergo cardiac catheterization for diagnosis and post-surgical follow-up. High speed, real-time MR imaging at 80 frames/sec is now possible and will be widely available in one to two years. The replacement of pediatric angiograms by MR would be cost effective and would avoid the risks of ionizing radiation, contrast agent reactions, and misplaced catheters. In order for MR to replace angiography, real-time image processing is needed to enable 3D reconstruction of the heart, which would clearly delineate the number and location of the coronary arteries. These 3D images would need to be rotated and examined by the radiologist at the time of the patient study. Again the GIODE collaborators will develop the necessary image processing RTPs including image enhancement and filtering; object (such as heart muscle) identification and volume reconstruction. These will be evolved and tested in the clinical experiments conduction by the Cornell Medical School. This application would naturally be implemented as a central service (images managed by the Kodak Picture technologies, image analysis by central parallel supercomputers) using NYNET to deliver this information to satellite hospitals.
2.3.3.2.3 Kodak/MCC/Rome Lab: Defense Imagery On-Demand
According to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, during his speech at the INTEROP convention in May 1992, more communications capability was installed during Desert Storm and Desert Shield than during 40 years of supporting U.S. troops in the European theater. And yet the fastest dissemination of tactical reconnaissance images took 19 hours from acquisition to delivery. Why so much communications and so little capability for imagery on-demand?
Many images took much longer to deliver and some never even got delivered. In a large number of cases, valuable images "died" on a desk somewhere because the exploiters didn't know which fighting organization needed the specific images and the war fighters didn't know the imagery was available or where it was located. This lack of rapid imagery location, "browsing," selection and dissemination severely hampered certain operations, especially bomb damage assessments and the detection, location and destruction of mobile SCUD missile launchers. Critical fighter/bomber resources were wasted in unnecessary target restrikes and missed opportunities to take out mobile missile launchers. In the words of one theater commander: "Show me today's `take' and I'll select the images that best suit my needs." Global Imagery On Demand (GIODE) will demonstrate a solution to this requirement for imagery intelligence (IMINT). In conjunction with the U.S. Air Force Rome Laboratory, another InfoMall collaborator, GIODE will demonstrate the HPCC enablement and utility of IMINT imagery on-demand.
This application demonstration will evaluate commercial GIODE RAPs in light of existing DoD architectures and software being implemented for the Prototype Secondary Imagery Dissemination System (PSIDS). Tailored RAP modifications will enable extended image resolutions to be stored in the image library. Key to this high resolution approach is the planned extension to 4K x 4K pixel resolution and higher of the industry standard Image-Pac compressed storage format. This approach will enable full-resolution storage and dissemination of commercial (stock photography), medical and defense related images using one common set of re-usable application pieces (RAPs). Other activity will provide operability in the HPCC networked (ATM) environment to satisfy specific DoD (Global Grid) requirements.
2.3.3.2.4 Rome Laboratory: InfoMall Management and Security Office
The main objectives of the proposed InfoMall Management and Security Office is to provide real time management and protection of the assets that comprise the communications transport assets and information services of the InfoMall. The project will focus on the development of the mechanisms that will be required within the InfoMall infrastructure for providing these capabilities.
Information Management. A network management structure will have to be provided for monitoring and controlling both the communications transport assets and the service providers of the InfoMall. Unlike conventional networks, the InfoMall network management must have uncontested monitoring access to many of the high performance computing and communications capabilities that will be intrinsic to InfoMall, so that it may respond to changes in the InfoMall distributed computing strategies and provide connectivity changes to the computing infrastructure. Knowledge of many of the processes going on within the InfoMall will be required so that the network management office is aware of the current status of all the services provided on the InfoMall. Part of the motivation for this capability is to enable the rapid restoration of services, without any knowledge by the consumers, of the failures within InfoMall. This project will investigate a variety of approaches toward system failure analysis and attempt to develop ways for predicting and circumventing such conditions.
Security Office. The security office will be systemic to InfoMall. It will oversee entry into InfoMall, verify rights for access to services, assure privacy among users and detect surreptitious behavior. This area will apply dual-use principles to the work in DoD conducted regarding security. Under this portion of the project a functional partitioning of the security for InfoMall will be designed.
This project will be led by Rome Laboratory and will be a collaborative effort with Columbia University, Polytechnic University of New York, Cornell University, NPAC, and NYNEX. This will be an in-house program for all the participants that will lead to a demonstration in 1995. It is expected that after the demonstration phase, efforts will focus on transforming these capabilities into a product for national use.
2.3.3.2.5 Martin Marietta: Real Time Control Systems
Martin Marietta Ocean Systems produces the AN/BSY-2 which is a real time surveillance, command and engagement system implemented with over 100 distributed data and signal processors and 3 million ADA source lines of code. The real time system services infrastructure is at the core of the AN/BSY-2. There are numerous commercial applications that can be represented by the same system concept with networked computers subject to life or function time critical constraints Examples occur in medical applications, automated factories and the control of instruments and machines.
The goal of this pilot project is to migrate (spin-off) the existing AN/BSY-2 real time infrastructure toward dual-use to satisfy real time requirements and as a means of reducing factory and hospital costs via automation and resource sharing. Existing commercial infrastructures are typically non-real time and other existing military infrastructures are too application specific. The flexible architecture and implementation of the AN/BSY-2 enables it to be easily migrated to other open platforms. The initial phase (first year) of this project shall focus on the selection and integration of the hardware and software necessary to complete the infrastructure which will use InfoMall facilities, including the accelerator RTP produced in Section 2.3.3.1.4. In the second year, a pilot application will be selected and the enhanced real-time operating system implemented. We will carefully evaluate both the success of the application and the changes needed in AN/BSY-2 to apply it commercially.
Due to the similarity of the military and commercial applications, the results of this project have inherent dual-use applicability. Utilization of open system standards of the computers and communications networks (hardware and software) will minimize the cost of the components while simultaneously supporting future growth. Future Defense systems will cost less, since the technology will be improved and maintained by the commercial marketplace which can spread the cost over more users.
2.3.3.2.6 NYNEX/VA: Collaborative Health Care
This health care application in the Veterans Administration Hospital is based on using collaborative technology, state-of-the-art, high-speed networking and multimedia technology. The initial phase of this project links the path of referral between cardiologists at the Syracuse VA Hospital with heart surgeons at the Buffalo VA Hospital. This practice of collaborative health care is the norm over the 170 VA Hospital sites in the nation--only ten sites perform heart surgery. The present communication link between cardiologists and surgeons at geographically distributed sites is limited to telephone and express mail delivery of laboratory results, images of the heart, and diagnoses. The NYNEX Multimedia Broadband Services collaborative technology will be applied to provide a single-image database, and interactive, multi-media communication between cardiologists and surgeons to treat VA Hospital heart patients.
2.3.3.2.7 Booz, Allen & Hamilton/FBI/NHCCA: Health Care Fraud
The Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) Practice at Booz, Allen & Hamilton proposes to develop an advanced technology health care anti-fraud pilot project within the framework of InfoMall. Initially, the project will focus on gaining a thorough understanding of the complex issues associated with health care fraud. In the second stage, we will develop algorithms which both embody aspects of techniques currently employed by insurers to fight fraud, as well as novel approaches which are impractical with the limited computing power of traditional mainframe or workstation technology. These new algorithms will include methods from graph theory, social organization theory, and sophisticated network analysis techniques to help identify and limit losses due to coordinated fraud activity. In the final stage of development, we will implement these algorithmic techniques on InfoMall facilities. The result of this effort will be a demonstration using medical insurance claims transaction data to prove the utility of these techniques. We envision using "sanitized" data to protect privacy at this stage of development.
One aspect of the increasing cost of health care in the United States is the astounding magnitude of health care fraud. Industry and Law Enforcement Community estimates of fraud losses range from $20 billion to $100 billion, annually. The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA), an organization representing government and commercial health care providers, projects that as much as 10% of the nation's $939.9 billion health care expenses in 1993 will be lost to fraud. Losses of this magnitude affect not only the industry, but the economic welfare, and in some cases the health, of every citizen. Luckily, the proliferation of electronic claims processing has opened new avenues for high-technology approaches to fraud control. However, the large volume of such data requires HPCC technology for successful analysis.
Most existing fraud detection systems only look at individual claims and compare them with established norms. We intend to address the algorithmically and computationally harder problem of identifying collusive or coordinated fraudulent practices. Basic analysis technologies RTPs to be developed include the following: "link analysis" will be used to identify and characterize groups of interconnected entities; trend analysis will be used to study group behavior, relationships, and patterns over time; profiling will determine patterns of connectivity and/or behavior associated with known fraud and identifies previously unknown groups with similar patterns.
Booz, Allen will collaborate with one or more New York state or private insurance providers to obtain insights into organization-specific investigative anti-fraud methods and sample health care claims data. The FBI and the NHCCA are key collaborators in this InfoMall project and they have committed their support in letters contained in the cost proposal. The FBI has a lead role in health care fraud at the federal level. The NHCAA is the leading association promoting efforts nationally in the fight against health care fraud. The membership of NHCAA represents the major private insurers, law enforcement agencies, prosecutor organizations, and other government agencies associated with the health care system. The initial product of the pilot project will be RTPs and RAPs designed specifically for health care anti-fraud, but whose basic functionality will be equally applicable to other forms of fraud.
2.3.3.2.8 AGE/NPAC: "Edutainment'
AGE has identified two initial projects on which it will work with NPAC. These projects will be managed by Chris Gentile of AGE, who is leading their new consumer virtual reality enterprise. The first project will develop parallel computing as a mechanism to increase the performance of new AGE consumer products. This is, of course, not a massively parallel application (although the new graphic processor has parallel functions on a chip) but the InfoMall architecture and software expertise will aid and accelerate product development for AGE. The current crop of multimedia products for the entertainment market have largely adopted the "virtual book" or "virtual encyclopedia" formats. AGE believes that students will be more interested in and hence learn more from "edutainment" products where the educational material is woven into a successful computer game format. We will explore this concept using HPCC to generate and deliver realistic scenarios on which we can superimpose classical role-playing and adventure games. NPAC expects to adapt the storm simulation produced at the NSF CAPS center at Oklahoma to act as the backdrop for a classic adventure games where high speed vehicles must avoid danger. Students will learn about weather and its harbingers and expected development by viewing it as a dangerous environment which must be successfully navigated.
2.3.3.2.9 IBM PPS/NPAC: Financial Modeling
This joint venture between IBM PPS and NPAC will focus on enabling financial high performance computing applications that can significantly benefit securities, banking and insurance companies. These organizations have an urgent need for applications that can provide more timely analysis of large amounts of economic and customer data using increasingly complex application logic to support their daily operations and executive decision making. IBM will use its contacts in this area to form a consortium of users and establish requirements for RAPs in financial applications. NPAC has developed parallel financially modeling for stock option pricing and this will be used as a model for other applications identified by the consortium.
2.3.3.2.10 Tripos: Chemical Simulation
Molecular simulations and other aspects of computational chemistry offer extraordinary support to growing efforts to produce molecules tailor-made with properties that exhibit high degrees of biological activity, optimal structure characteristics for synthetic materials, specific transport characteristics, etc. The techniques of computational chemistry are being utilized today by pharmaceutical industry, commodity and specialized chemical companies, energy and environmental products corporations. However, elimination of unnecessary approximations and examination of large complex biological molecules is a critical opportunity opened up by HPCC. For example, researchers routinely simulate dynamics of proteins for several weeks on a Cray and this application uses algorithms that we know how to parallelize. As part of the project, Tripos will parallelize this molecular mechanics case and other parts of their comprehensive SYBYL molecular modeling system. Their package includes AMBER, MM2, MM3 and generalizations for molecular modeling. Tripos will also address the area of automating experimental data preparation for molecular modeling, especially utilizing multi-dimensional NMR spectroscopy (with 109 or more data elements) to correlate with computational data.
2.3.3.2.11 Ultra: Demonstration Project--Porting and Scaling InfoMall to DoD
Ultra Corporation is investigating the potential for "porting" the InfoMall concept to the operation of Electronic Systems Center (ESC) of the USAF. The spin-on application involves Rome Laboratory (RL) in the InfoTech role of this DoD franchise of InfoMall while the program offices at ESC are the shoppers. InfoMall DoD will offer the latest in database algorithms imagery exploitation, networking and conferencing HPCC-based technology. Programs such as AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Targeting System) will have direct access and can "buy" from these stores. Further, the market forces which drive InfoMall will shape and benefit the RL/ESC/InfoMall relationship of technology developer/user.
2.3.3.2.12 NASA/NPAC: Four Dimensional Data Assimilation
Four-dimensional data assimilation is the process of combining short-term model predictions with actual observations, using estimates of relative errors, to form an ongoing best estimate of the evolving state of the system. The Data Assimilation Office at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is charged with developing research-quality assimilated data sets for Earth Science, and in particular for the Earth Observing System (EOS). The DAO is unique because it is a center of data assimilation research that is not dominated by the science of numerical weather prediction. Therefore, it fills a mandate prescribed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS, 1991) to develop data assimilation capabilities to address Earth system process studies and global change.
2.3.3.2.13 NPAC/Niagara Mohawk Corporation: Transient Stability Analysis for Power Systems
An important aspect of the operation of an electrical power network is the security model, which simulates the response of the network to disturbances such as component failure. These simulations allow power utilities to identify possible sources of cascading failures which could cause a disruption of power supply, and to take pro-active measures to prevent their occurrence. In order to maintain the fault tolerance of the network, extra generation and transmission capacity must be available. There is a certain margin of error factored into this extra capacity due to the limited accuracy of the simulations. Better simulations would allow improved system security and reduced operating margins, saving energy and reducing environmental impact.
Current security model simulations are based on component stability limits which are determined very infrequently, using worst-case models. Improved stability limits based on the actual state of the network would greatly improve the accuracy of these simulations. Stability limits are based on transient stability analysis, which examines the dynamic behavior of the network following a power flow disturbance. This involves the solution of a set of coupled differential-algebraic equations (DAEs), which is a highly compute intensive problem that currently is far from being soluble in real-time.
There has been significant research in recent years on more accurate and efficient DAE solvers, including parallel algorithms for DAE solvers and for the associated sparse matrix solvers which are required for power systems problems. We are aiming to build on these new algorithms to develop a DAE solver which is most suited to the problem of transient stability analysis, and will provide a substantial improvement in accuracy and speed over current methods.
Analysis of the output of the transient stability program is a technical art, requiring trained, experienced engineers. In order for the results to be available in real-time, we are investigating the use of expert systems for identifying results which are transient stable or unstable.
We are pursuing this project in collaboration with Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, a central New York utility headquartered in Syracuse. They are providing input on their current methods and future requirements in this area.
2.3.3.2.14 NPAC: Geographic Information System Applications
Current projects at NPAC based on dual-use HPCC technologies in GIS include the All Source Analysis System (ASAS, US Army) database project, and the DoD Global Grid (US Air Force) virtual deployment and decision support system. Related projects in industry include the weather information system of the Niagrara Mohawk Power Corporation which are developing to be accessible over the NYNET gigabit telecommunications network with Rome Laboratory (US Air Force), as well as GIS-based banking, manufacturing, small-business support and market analysis (NPAC ACTION program). Public sector applications include an IBM grant to develop a GIS framework for modeling acid deposition effects in the Adirondack Park. This modeling framework will be included in a law suit brought by New York State over the pollution trading provisions of the 1992 Clean Air Act. A second public sector application is a basin wide information system and flood forecast model for the Eastern Lake Ontario basin (proposal to US Army Corps Engineers) for mitigating flood effects while managing multiple, conflicting uses of water resources in this region.
2.3.3.2.15 Educational Consortium: HPCC in the Classroom
The combination of virtual reality display technology and HPCC computer simulations allow one to offer sophisticated views of the real world with important educational value. In this collaboration between NPAC, Syracuse University School of Education , Columbia Teachers College, new York Telephone, and NYNEX, we propose two demonstration projects. In "New York State -- The Interactive Journey", we will support interactive real-time tours of New York State based on LANDSAT satellite images. We will represent the landscape of New York in three dimensions, and support the links necessary to allow teachers and students to add related databases. Student on the "interactive journey" will be able to navigate through New York State geography, and related databases (e.g., archeological, geological, environmental, business, demographic). In a second project we will collect a set of "Grand Challenge" science simulations and re-package them as educational software programs running high-performance computers at NPAC, and distribute them to schools over the NYNET regional high-speed network. Students and teachers will be able to direct these simulations, modify laws of physics, and see the effects in applications such as collisions of "black holes" in space, or the behavior of tornados; by modifying public policy decisions, students could evaluate environmental impacts on the Adirondack Park or the Northeast U.S.
2.3.3.2.16 NPAC/Syracuse Research Consortium: Computational Electromagnetics
The objective of this project is to demonstrate the potential of the method of moments (MOM) technology, implemented on parallel computers, for radar cross-section (RCS) modeling of full scale airborne vehicles. We are developing explicit message-passing parallel algorithms of a 3D MOM code, PARAMOM, which was developed previously in Fortran77 at Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC) for accurate and efficient predictions of RCS. Our approach is to develop the PARAMOM code on multiple MIMD platforms, including CM5 , Intel machines and IBM SP-1, to provide a concrete demonstration of the portability and scalability of the parallel implementation and to provide performance comparisons between these machines.
The most distinctive feature of PARAMOM (which stands for "Parametric Patch Method of Moment" code) is its use of basis functions that conforms to parametric surfaces with curvature. The ability of PARAMOM to accurately account for surface curvature with the use of parametric surface patches has in many cases shown significant advantage over conventional techniques that employ flat facets as modeling elements.
The features of the initial parallel algorithm design will be scalable data decomposition, use of stable and efficient parallel linear solvers for large dense matrices, effective use of memory, and optimized balance of computation and communication for this application.
We choose to adopt in our implementation the scalable and portable parallel linear algebra package ScaLAPACK developed at ORL and would also investigate the use of vendor-supplied package, e.g. ProSolver-DES on the Intel machine and CMSSL dense solver on CM5, to achieve optimum performance.
2.3.3.2.17 MADIC: Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design Industry Consortium
MADIC, consortium of leading U.S. industries, proposes a revolutionary simulation-based approach to integrated product and process design through the use of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) technology. This approach, which also addresses manufacturing issues in the early design phases, will provide higher quality designs while decreasing the design cycle time and cost. Under the proposed program, the skills and resources of industry, Government and universities will be leveraged to develop the technologies, in the form of integration software and toolkits, required to build integrated MDO-based design systems that can be commercialized and used by a wide range of industries. Pilot projects which represent challenging design problems of the aerospace and transportation industries will be conducted to demonstrate the technology. Implementation of this technology into the product development process of the U.S. industries will significantly increase U.S. competitiveness. High quality jobs will be retained as a result and new jobs will be created.
Outreach is central to InfoMall's approach to software development in order to establish links between technology producers (typically computer science researchers for HPCC software) and consumers of HPCC products. Due to the complexity of HPCC software development, the links between producers and consumers consist of several "small" links rather than a single "giant step". The special strength of the InfoMall partners is their ability to reach all of the organizations that are needed to establish a series of small links, from technology research ` InfoTech ` software teams (expedited by federal SBA and economic development agencies) ` integration and consulting organizations ` HPCC consumers. (see Figure 6)
Many outreach activities are designed directly into InfoMall programs and are described in subsequent sections of this document. The technical training and education services are directly targeted as outreach to software teams and HPCC consumers. In addition, economic development and InfoMall publication and marketing functions represent critical activities. The outreach activities are proactive; InfoMall partners will identify potential participants and initiate outreach programs with them. Many of the InfoMall partners bring their own strong outreach capabilities. For instance, the HPCC vendor, consulting and integration companies bring both technology and marketing skills, which are critical to our outreach strategy to HPCC consumers.
The outreach activities are designed to serve both the defense and civilian communities. This will enable links between defense and civilian applications, spin-on and spin-off activities, defense and civilian software teams and HPCC consumers. Rome Laboratory is a major partner in the initial InfoMall team and will play a critical role in outreach to the defense community.
InfoMall is an open virtual organization with international connections to technology producers and consumers. Since we intend to avoid internal redevelopment of HPCC technologies and application components when these are available elsewhere, it is important for us to locate and use, where appropriate, the best technologies in the world. The InfoTech program implements this global outreach for critical enabling technologies; the NSF Center CRPC will play a key role. For example, CRPC implemented the successful agreement to a High Performance FORTRAN Standard, which involved the international communities of HPCC vendors and of computer science research.
Finally, we emphasize that the InfoMall virtual corporation will be fully implemented electronically. This capability will be supported by NYSERNet, which has excellent credentials and experience in this area. Further, we will use modern collaborative (interactive video conferencing) technologies, in which the InfoMall partner NYNEX has expertise.
2.3.5 InfoSchool: Technical Training, Consulting and Education
A carefully designed set of workshops, courses and seminars--called generically InfoSchool--is central to InfoMall's proactive outreach and support program. We have assembled an unrivaled team to design and prototype initial course material and then package this into professional training material for wide distribution. The team includes Booz, Allen and Hamilton, Cornell, CRPC, NYSERNet and NPAC, with additional help from HPCC vendors for educational material on their products. For instance, MasPar will train users of their machines and the small Ithaca business ISIS will provide educational modules for their distributed computing software. CRPC, through the InfoTech project, will prototype several training modules on basic parallel computing technologies. This material will be evolved by InfoMall staff based on this initial development by the world experts in each technology area. Generally, InfoSchool will use this two-step strategy with technology developers/experts training the teachers who then evolve and deliver material to InfoMall customers.
We will use the InfoTech RTP classification to decide on the set of modules offered in InfoSchool. We are currently developing a set of ten modules (typified by units on High Performance Fortran, parallel I/O, ATM and collaborative technologies). CRPC is already committed to such a strategy for the parallel computing technologies developed in this NSF center. CRPC will give a course, built up from technology modules, this fall to the NSF Supercomputer Center consultants. We will, of course incorporate appropriate modules from this course into the InfoSchool curricula.
There are three broad classes of students at InfoSchool. First, we have the developers of HPCC applications--software teams who have a reasonably clear product goal but need training in relevant component technologies. This training will consist of both an initial workshop and ongoing consulting as the InfoMall technologies and facilities are used during HPCC product design and development. For example, customers who intend to develop HPCC applications for automotive design may require a training module which equips them with a proficiency in High Performance Fortran. Another InfoMall client may intend to develop applications in a broad range of financial or economic modeling applications. That client will require a tailored module which will establish a basic understanding of efficient modeling strategies and perhaps a set of off-the-shelf tools such as DsTool in Sec 2.3.3.1.7.
The second target audience for InfoSchool is software engineers moving into the HPCC area as employment opportunities decline in other areas. NPAC is funded by New York State for a pilot project of this type in the Mid-Hudson region affected by the down-sizing of IBM. Such engineers could naturally staff the new HPCC small businesses targeted by InfoMall. InfoSchool courses here would be similar to, but more general than, those customized for an existing software team.
A third category of InfoMall customers requiring HPCC education are those business and industry managers and decision makers whose enterprise demands HPCC solutions, and who require a greater understanding of the technology to make informed decisions. For this class of consumer, InfoSchool will provide a diverse set of workshops and conferences to close the information gaps and acquaint them with relevant aspects of HPCC technologies. Examples of such workshops may include overviews of HPCC architectures, hardware and software alternatives, price and performance metrics, operations and maintenance, business-relevant software applications, etc. Since consumers of InfoMall products will frequently require specialized and sometimes tailored services in the area of education and training, InfoSchool offers both standard off-the-shelf training packages and customized workshops to fit a particular client's needs.
The first initial versions of the above courses will be offered in the Fall of 1993 in both Central New York, the Mid-Hudson region and in collaboration with Digital, as part of the State of New Hampshire's HPCC initiative. Booz, Allen and Hamilton and NPAC will also offer a three-day course aimed at users of the parallel ORACLE database system.
Success of a multifaceted interdisciplinary program such as InfoMall requires close attention to the integration and synergy of the component activities. The integration function will be the responsibility of NPAC and, in particular, its director, Fox. Fox led a major interdisciplinary project (the Caltech Concurrent Computation Program--C3P) from 1983-1990, which integrated Caltech faculty and students from many different fields with Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers. This project is generally viewed as very successful and credited with developing some of the first important applications and systems software for parallel computers. This, like InfoMall, was also dual-use with major defense (Electronic Systems Division of USAF) and civilian (mainly DoE) components. InfoMall will address much harder software and systems than the relatively simple C3P applications--although the largest of these involved 100,000 lines of code. The implementation of InfoMall incorporates the lessons of C3P and the integration of InfoMall activities will be the responsibility and major role of Fox. He will be helped by a small team at NPAC who will be responsible for monitoring, evaluating and implementing the integration of InfoMall. Fox's ten years of experience in integration of interdisciplinary work is reflected in the training and skills of these NPAC staff.
A key feature of our integration strategy is the design of InfoMall itself, which features not just technology producers and consumers, but organizations and technologies that will enhance linkage and, hence, outreach (Section 2.3.4). The InfoTech activity (Section 2.3.2) is the key technical idea behind our integration's strategy. InfoTech evaluates and supports technologies in a way that allows different groups to work together and re-use technologies where possible. InfoTech also promotes and facilitates the use of standard interfaces to better allow integration of technology components. As discussed in Section 2.3.1, we will use collaborative technologies supported and developed by NYNEX and NYSERNet to enhance integration and collaboration between InfoMall partners.
Finally, we emphasize that the organizations involved in InfoMall such as Booz, Allen and Hamilton, IBM FSC, Martin Marietta, ISSC, and Sterling Software have direct expertise in commercial and military integration.
2.3.7 High Tech Small Business Assistance Program
Education, facilities, InfoTech, outreach and networking, and consulting are InfoMall services which are quite specific and targeted at the support of HPCC software development. InfoMall integrates these with a broad range of other critical services needed by an HPCC small business. These include incubator space, training in and evaluation of business plans, and administration support, as well as marketing and economic inducements available through our New York State partners.
InfoMall assists small companies and entrepreneurs wishing to start new businesses. To reduce the risk of failure in new software development ventures, InfoMall assists with access to financial resources, and offers business development, management and technical assistance. InfoMall helps new businesses apply the latest HPCC computer and communication facilities in their day to day activities.
One of InfoMalls' objectives is to assist its client population to identify a stable source of funding for operations as well as research and development activities. Companies that spend their time in an endless hunt for funding are not able to pay attention to the development of the company and its new product, or the technology applications process. InfoMall will assist qualified firms to seek a variety of sources of capital and to take advantage of local and other funding programs such as the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program.
Recognizing the value of experienced support to the emerging HPCC industry, InfoMall proposes to establish a team of experienced technical, business, and economic development resources who will provide coordinated assistance to small businesses. This team consists of the Central New York Technology Development Organization (CNYTDO) and TDO affiliates in target regions, the Center for Computer Applications and Software Engineering (CASE) at Syracuse University, and the ACTION program of NPAC at Syracuse University.
The CNYTDO offers an SBIR Specialist who will inform small businesses about the SBIR program, and offer one-on-one assistance with preparation of proposals, including abstract reviews, budget preparation, advice about intellectual property protection, and information about commercialization opportunities. The latter is supplemented by the CASE Center staff and other local resources.
Though the SBIR program offers great promise for research and development support to small HPCC businesses, there is need for more stable funding for operations for the time intervals before funding is awarded, and between funding phases of the SBIR program. We propose to establish a small seed fund to assist the small business to prepare for its Phase I award. This critical resource is not available to small businesses in New York State today and it is a major deterrent to many small businesses that would otherwise participate in the SBIR program.
InfoMall actively seeks sources of private funding such as venture capitalists and angels. VC funding rarely reaches more than 1% of those who apply. Since this type of sponsor is seeking to identify the most commercially promising ideas, we believe that InfoMall can improve the chances of successful funding by introducing the new entrepreneur to VCs and SBICs that will be naturally attracted to InfoMall and aggressively recruited by InfoMall Outreach staff. The small business will be positioned to promote its ideas after rigorous review and advising by the InfoMall small business review board which will be described later in this proposal.
InfoMall offers the experienced services of the Center for Computer Applications and Software Engineering (CASE). CASE Director of Technology Transfer, Dr. George Levy is a veteran entrepreneur who started a company that was listed on the 1989 INC. 500 list. In addition to personal counseling services, CASE offers the review and advisory services of a panel of small business experts, the Technology Business Advisory Group (T-BAG) which meets regularly to review business plans of emerging businesses and to assist technical entrepreneurs to develop successful businesses in Central New York. Its members are leading business people and professionals who have substantial experience in high-technology development, a keen interest in new ideas, and development of business ventures.
The Law, Technology, and Management Program, and its Technology Transfer Research Center (TTRC), an innovation of the College of Law at Syracuse University, offers multidisciplinary development of detailed business plans and intellectual property or marketing analyses related to technology development within small businesses.
HPCC development efforts are hindered because small business typically do not have access to the latest HPCC computer and communication facilities. InfoMall offers the use of its facilities to small businesses without charge. Technical consultants will also be available to assist with the use of the facilities. In addition, we are working with NYSERNet to establish a connection to the Internet for each small software development business during the first year of its active involvement with InfoMall. Discounts of 50% will be offered doing the first year to other small businesses who participate in InfoMall. Other services include new incubator space for qualified new small businesses (jointly with the existing CASE Center incubator, which has spawned over 25 companies in 9 years), participation in seminars and workshops, and publication of technical reports and newsletters. Information and advice about intellectual property rights issues will also be available to small businesses.
As with traditional shopping malls, InfoMall is designed to support a critical level of commerce between partners and customers. Though we have evidence that the features of InfoMall will attract interested individuals, an aggressive marketing component enhances the exposure of the mall. Marketing efforts are directed by dedicated staff from NPAC. The actual outreach efforts will include participation from CASE, NYSERNet, the TDOs, HPCC vendors, InfoMall Advisory Board and other participants in InfoMall. Many have pledged staff time toward the effort.
An NPAC publications specialist will publish a quarterly newsletter and more frequent "News Flashes" to keep participants informed of late breaking developments. Selected mall participants will serve as advisors to ensure that marketing materials are effective.
Though InfoMall is a "virtual organization", there are occasions when a physical presence is advantageous. We intend to organize technical conferences and trade shows twice a year. The theme of these events will be to share information about the various state-of-the-art in the various HPCC components, status of pilot projects, and resources available at the various stores of InfoMall.
The business, facility and program support functions are provided by the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center. NPAC has operated the ACTION outreach program for several years and will build its Mall administration on the current infrastructure. NPAC also brings seven years of more general experience supporting sponsored research and outreach activities related to the use of HPCC technology.
We are setting up a major, ongoing self evaluation project using two partners Booz, Allen and Hamilton, and Sterling Software who are experienced in this area.
Every dynamic organization must periodically evaluate its progress toward objectives and determine the need for adjustments to its focus, structure, and goals. For a service-oriented organization such as InfoMall, it is also important to evaluate the relevance of its product offerings, the quality of its services, and the responsiveness of its organizational structure through the eyes of its clients/consumers. For this reason, the design plan for InfoMall incorporates an evaluation process which includes procedures to formally evaluate critical attributes of the organization for its constituent members and management. This process serves two fundamental purposes. First, it is the primary mechanism through which the InfoMall management and partners assess the impact of their services and products, both good and bad. As a result, InfoMall will reinforce activities with the greatest benefit to its clients. Conversely, the evaluations highlight activities which require tangible corrective actions or products which are viewed as unsatisfactory. As the InfoMall concept evolves, the evaluations should also identify new service offerings or organizational restructuring in response to changing or maturing markets and products.
The second principal purpose of the evaluation process will be to thoroughly document the evolution of InfoMall as an organization, including its service and product offerings. Although InfoMall was first established in New York state, the lessons learned and knowledge gained will be of significant value for other states or regions that desire to implement similar concepts for its business and industrial bases. Documentation of the lessons learned will be a key ingredient for transferring this knowledge and an important intellectual product which can be disseminated by ARPA. This will allow one to see if InfoMall is, indeed, a nationally scalable organization for software development. The evaluation process is led be Booz, Allen & Hamilton, which has significant experience in management and technology consulting in partnership with Sterling Software. Booz, Allen has particular expertise in evaluating organizational productivity and efficiency and advising on "best practices," effective strategies, and re-engineering alternatives.
2.4 InfoMall--Management and Budget
InfoMall has a strong experienced management with initial infrastructure based on two years seed funding by New York State.
InfoMall is administered by NPAC with director Geoffrey C. Fox. The individual programs (stores) within InfoMall have independent management with central services falling under NPAC. The current management responsibility is shown in Table 2 which also indicates major areas of interest for the InfoMall participants. Each of the RTP and RAP projects in 2.3.3 is led and managed separately by the lead organization described in the text.
A Board of Directors for InfoMall consisting of the extant ACTION Industrial Advisory Board and representatives from InfoMall partners sets direction for the program. Working subcommittees are being formed for critical programs areas such as publications, facilities, InfoTech and marketing and fund raising. As we obtain further sponsorship for InfoMall we will break the advisory broad into institutional and technical components.
We have set up "HPCC" consumer groups" in the areas of K-12 education and healthcare as consortia of schools and hospitals respectively in Central New York. We are linked with MADIC (Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design Industrial Consortium) which is an industry led national consortium of major manufacturing corporations. Other such user groups will be set up.
InfoMall programs are being initiated based on existing New York State funding at NPAC; seed funding of InfoTech by CRPC; the NYNET investment by NYNEX; and existing synergistic program funding by the other participants. The core infrastructure and facilities are already essentially in place. This existing funding will allow the set up of a major educational program and pilot activities in the other InfoMall programs.
We have obtained significant industrial support for InfoMall. This corresponds to both equipment discounts and donations as well as funded technology and application projects. InfoMall will not tax commerce in the mall. Funding will come from direct industry contributions - either in kind or cash; there will be no extra royalties on "purchases" made by consumers at technology or product stores - InfoMall services (education, facilities, consulting) will be charged appropriately. Alternatively for a basic fee of $25K/year a corporation becomes a member of InfoMall allowing reasonable facility, education and consulting services.
The InfoMall partners have begun discussions toward the adoption of an intellectual property and proprietary rights agreement for the Mall enterprise. These discussions will continue with the goal of establishing a charter agreement that allows each individual to freely engage in private commerce while enabling the exchange of intellectual property and the ultimate commercialization of qualified products.
We expect that the combinations of New York State and corporate funding will allow InfoMall to become self sufficient within three years. Some parts of InfoMall -- including the applications and InfoTech -- are attractive candidates for other federal and private funding.
InfoMall consists of nine programs (stores) described in Sections 2.3.1 through 2.3.9. Section 2.3.3 consists of over twenty-five RTP and RAP projects. As explained in Section 2.4 and listed in Table 2, every InfoMall component has an identified lead organization. Progress in each component will be documented by quarterly reports. Responsibility for ensuring that technical progress is coordinated and that difficulties in one component are not allowed to impact the proper operation of InfoMall, rests with the integration component (Section 2.3.6).
Each component will hold internal meetings in addition to several general meetings of the participants of InfoMall. The Board of Directors, described in Section 2.4, will meet every month for the first six months and every two months thereafter. The location of these meetings will be rotated between key host organizations and, where possible, held in locations offering video conferencing facilities. The Board of Directors will ensure that InfoMall makes maximum use of its partners' capabilities and identify any possible difficulties or opportunities. Every six months, meetings will be held for the technical staff of the InfoMall component projects. These will allow for technical exchange of information. Part of these meetings will be open to the public to allow worldwide exposure to InfoMall and an interchange with other technology transfer and development projects.
The deliverables in InfoMall fall into two broad classes. First, there are re-usable technology (RTP) products and re-usable application (RAP) products. These products will be produced over the first two years with several RTPs and RAPs available after the first year.
The major deliverable is the lessons from InfoMall -- is this, as we claim, a scalable organization for the development of HPCC software and systems? InfoMall will be developed in four stages corresponding to mall construction, deployment to Upstate New York, full InfoMall availability to the entire state and finally testing the concept in selected sites elsewhere in the nation.
The progress and success of these four phases is a critical deliverable and it is explicitly funded as the evaluation component (Section 2.3.9) of InfoMall. The products of the evaluation component will be major reports describing each phase and their findings will be discussed in the meetings described earlier. This component will present the results of the other component projects in a form that will allow their success and scaling to be monitored and acted upon as necessary. The evaluation project will work closely with technical integration (Section 2.3.6) which has day-to-day responsibility for integrated Mall operation and success.