Joe,  I have done my best to provide a few paragraphs on each of the
areas in which we are working so that you can slot them in as
appropriate.  Please let me know if you want more or different stuff
in any area and I will do my best to help.

PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT

FORCES MODELING AND SIMULATION

The Forces Modeling and Simulation computational technology area is in
a fairly unusual position among the DoD CTAs, though it does share
some characteristics with Integrated Modeling and Testing.  Both FMS
and IMT tools are widely used throughout the DoD, however only a very
small portion of the user base are HPC users.  Instead, for a variety
of reasons, most FMS computing is done with local workstation or PC
resources.  To further complicate the situation, this field is in the
midst of a transition from the well-established "distributed
interactive simulation" standards for the development of applications
to the new object-oriented "high-level architecture" (HLA) approach,
following the mandate of the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office
(DMSO).

Supporting a field in this situation is somewhat of a challenge.  The
approach adopted by the PET program (at both the CEWES and ARL MSRCs,
where FMS is supported) involved tracking and monitoring this complex
and changing field and its relationship to commodity and HPCC
technologies.  A small number of carefully chosen focused efforts are
used to demonstrate the convergence of HLA with commodity distributed
computing technologies, and to port applications with substantial HPC
requirements to such systems.  The overall goal of this approach is to
develop exemplars which can then be used to highlight to the community
the opportunities available through the use of HPC and commodity
technologies.

The Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University has
the lead role in FMS support at both the CEWES and ARL MSRCs.  NPAC's
support team for the FMS area is composed primarily of NPAC's
Interactive Web Technologies Group, lead by Prof. Wojtek Furmanski.
NPAC has extensive experience in both HPCC and commodity technologies,
such as the world-wide web, Java and related tools, CORBA, and DCOM,
as well as modeling and simulation.

Trends in both the military modeling and simulation (M&S) community
and in the commodity distributed computing community point to the
increasing convergence in the next few years of the DMSO-mandated base
M&S technologies and commodity approaches involving Java, CORBA, and
related tools.  To highlight this convergence, NPAC researchers are
currently implementing HLA's Real-Time Infrastructure component in
Java and CORBA.  This commodity-based "Object Web RTI" system will
then be capable of supporting distributed execution of simulation
applications which are compliant with HLA, at the same time offering
the possibility to take advantage of all the capabilities of the
rapidly advancing field of commodity web technologies.  At the same
time, the FMS support team is also investigating the Comprehensive
Mine Simulator (CMS), from Steve Bishop's group at the US Army's Night
Vision Directorate, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia.  CMS is currently capable
of handling 30,000-50,000 mines on a single processor workstation, but
clearly requires and HPC system to reach the target of 1,000,000
mines.

In the near future, there will be further convergence of M&S
technologies with commodity distributed computing; there is already
serious discussion in the field of turning HLA into a CORBA service,
for example.  With this convergence, and as more FMS applications move
to the HLA standard, the two aspects of the PET program's approach to
the FMS field will also converge: as applications such as CMS become
HLA-compliant, they can be linked into larger distributed simulations,
using Object Web RTI technology to connect multiple HPCC systems
together.

COLLABORATION AND COMMUNICATION

The growth of web technologies offers some special opportunities to
facilitate the work of PET teams and DoD researchers.  Researchers at
Syracuse University's Northeast Parallel Architectures Center have
long been on the cutting edge of using web technology in support of
high-performance computing.  Tango is a Java-based collaboratory tool
which offers chat, whiteboard and shared web browser capabilities, as
well as two-way audio and video conferencing, developed previously
with support from the DoD's Rome Laboratory and SU's L.C. Smith
College of Engineering and Computer Science.  Besides deploying Tango
for a PET-supported distance education project with Jackson State
University, NPAC researchers have also expanded the capabilities of
Tango to support consulting and software development activities in
geographically separated groups with the addition of a shared tool to
view and modify source code as well as debug an analyze performance.

Perhaps even more apparent than facilitating collaboration, advances
in web and internet technologies have increased enormously the amount
of information on a huge range of subjects which can be found on the
network.  This can be an important resource for DoD researchers, but
only if it is possible to locate the desired information in the first
place.  To facilitate access and management of networked information,
NPAC is introducing relational database systems coupled with web
servers to the PET program.  Initial applications include the
management of large web sites and the development of search engines
focused on particular knowledge domains.  In the latter case, a search
engine focusing on grid generation (a technology cutting across
several CTA areas) was developed as a prototype, and plans are in
place for another search engine focus on Climate Weather and
Oceanography (CWO) resources.

TRAINING

The PET partner universities 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.
Syracuse University is leading a joint effort to produce CD-ROMs of
HPCC educational material to make available to DoD researchers for
self-study.  The first edition of the CD-ROM includes course materials
for several Syracuse University computational science courses, on-line
editions of two books on HPCC, various training materials, reference
material, and standards documents.  Plans are to continue and expand
this effort, producing at least one new CD-ROM edition each year
containing new and revised materials as the HPCC landscape changes.

HBCU/MI ENHANCEMENT

During the Fall 1997 and Spring 1998 terms, Jackson State University,
in Mississippi, twice offered the course CSC 499, "Programming for the
Web" to its students.  The course was taught by instructors physically
located at Syracuse University in New York using materials developed
for use in regular SU courses.  During the regularly scheduled
lectures, the instructors would display lecture slides on a
workstation in Syracuse, and students, attending class in a computer
lab at JSU, would see the slides on their screens as the instructor
displayed it.  The lecture was deliveres through an audio link, and
the students could ask questions either via the audio link or a "chat"
tool.

The technology behind this distance education project are the Tango
collaboratory tool and WebWisdom, an educational repository and
presentation tool.  The tools, developed by Syracuse University
researchers, utilize Java and other web-based technologies to provide
an environment for the full two-way exchange of multimedia content in
real time.  Capabilities include a shared web browser, chat tool,
whiteboard, and two-way streaming audio and video.

The course, which covered the architecture of the world-wide web,
HTML, CGI scripting, the Java programming language, and relational
database technologies, was very well received by students.  Syracuse
and Jackson State are looking forward to expanding their distance
education collaboration to include graduate-level courses, as well as
JSU faculty teaching CSC 499 remotely to other universities.  This
project also served as an important pilot for the use of the Tango and
WebWisdom tools to deliver PET-sponsored training classes to DoD
researchers, thereby increasing the availability of classes and
reducing the need to travel to attend them.