PET FOCUSED EFFORT PROPOSAL

Focused Effort Title: HPCC Educational CD-ROM

Thematic Area(s): HPC Training and DoD User Productivity

PI Name: David Bernholdt

PI EMail Address: bernhold@npac.syr.edu

PI Telephone:	315 443 3857
PI Fax:		315 443 1973

Project Description:

NPAC and other PET partners have a sizable volume of educational
materials on various areas of HPCC which are suitable for asynchronous
use, for example by DoD researchers wishing to increase their
familiarity with various HPCC techniques and tools through self-study.
The idea behind this project is to collect such materials into a
CD-ROM which can then be distributed to users.

NPAC already has the core of such a collection in a CD-ROM that was
produced for our Computational Science Education work in China
(http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/pcrc/cpswt-e/).  We would remove web
technologies (except for Java for computational science) and include
Virtual Programming Laboratory and SciVis material.  We would then
augment this with additional materials (i.e. grids, algebra,
programming tools) drawn from other PET partners, guided by an
editorial board including (we suggest) Jack Dongarra, Geoffrey Fox,
Chuck Koelbel, Joe Thompson, Louis Turcotte.

We envision this as an on-going project, with regular releases new CDs
containing updated materials in order to keep abreast of evolving
tools and technologies.  The current proposal includes funds for NPAC
to update materials, coordinate the acquisition of additional
materials, and produce the first CD distribution.  It also includes
funds to support other contributors updating and formatting their
materials appropriately for this method of dissemination.  As a
practical matter, we expect these funds to go directly from NRC to the
appropriate universities, thus avoiding additional costs and delays.

Benefits:

This projects is intended to provide a broad range of HPCC educational
material to DoD researchers to augment the more specific training
classes available at the MSRCs.  It will help researchers make better
use of the HPCC resources, and help them better understand which
trainings can be most helpful to them.

Deliverables:

CD-ROM produced and ready for distribution (March 1998)

Customer Commitment/Involvement:

This project was specifically requested by Louis Turcotte.