A CluE in the search for data-intensive computing

Unique relationship between Google, IBM and NSF allows academic computing research community to access large-scale computer cluster

Data clusters, also called data centers or server farms, contain as many as 90,000 servers. Click here for more information.

The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a solicitation for proposals for the new Cluster Exploratory (CluE) initiative. The CluE program was announced in February as a part of a relationship between Google, IBM and NSF. NSF hopes this initiative will help lead to innovations in the field of data-intensive computing, as well as serve as an example for future collaborations between the private sector and the academic computing research community.

CluE will provide NSF-funded researchers access to software and services running on a Google-IBM cluster to explore innovative research ideas in data-intensive computing. NSF will allocate cluster computing resources for a broad range of proposals which will explore the potential of this technology to contribute to science and engineering research and produce applications which promise to benefit society as a whole.

Jeannette Wing, assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at NSF, discusses the CluE solicitation. Click here for more information.

"The software and services that run on these data clusters provide a brand new paradigm for highly parallel, highly reliable distributed computing, especially for processing massive amounts of data," said Jeannette Wing, assistant director for CISE at NSF. Academic researchers have expressed a need for access to similar computing resources that will allow them to engage and explore this emerging and pervasive model of computing.