The National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) is a nationwide partnership of more than 50 academic, government and business organizations working together to prototype an advanced computational infrastructure for the new century. This infrastructure, called the Grid, is rapidly developing into a ubiquitous, pervasive, national-scale information infrastructure that links supercomputers, virtual environments, scientific instruments, large databases and research teams.
Started in 1997, the Alliance is one of two national partnerships funded by the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program and receives cost-sharing at partner institutions. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign leads the Alliance under the direction of NCSA and Alliance Director Dan Reed.
The Alliance includes an Enabling Technologies (ET) team, which builds the infrastructure of the Grid, and five Application Technologies (AT) teams, which drive the development of applications and tools to meet the needs of specific scientific disciplines. The Partners for Advance Computational Services (PACS) provide computing resources and training to the national high-performance computing community. The Education, Outreach and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI) spans both PACI partnerships and brings PACI innovations to new audiences, including schools, local, state and federal government, and underserved populations.
Below are some specific affiliates of the Center through the Alliance: