Glossary

ACTS
Advanced Communications Technology Satellite, a NASA-sponsored program. A joint NASA/DARPA collaboration will demonstrate high speed ATM/SONET transmission over the ACTS satellite, and will provide interface and operations experience in mating high speed terrestrial communications systems with high speed satellite communications systems.

AHCPR
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, part of the Public Health Service of the HHS.

Air Pollution Distance Learning Network
Used for advanced models training and information dissemination.

Algorithm
A procedure designed to solve a problem. Scientific computing programs implement algorithms.

AMSANT
Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Networking Testbed. Experimental facility for testing integration of distributed virtual manufacturing enterprises.

ARPANet
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.

ARPANet
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.

ATDNet
Advanced Technology Demonstration Network.

ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a telecommunications technology, also known as cell switching, which is based on 53-byte cells.

ASTA
Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms, a component of the original HPCC Program.

Backbone Network
A high capacity electronic trunk - for example the NSFNET backbone - connecting lower capacity networks.

Bandwidth
A measure of the capacity of a communications channel to transmit information; for example, million of bits per second or Mb/s.

BC
Biomolecular computing.

Benchmark
A point of reference (artifact) to compare an aspect of systems performance (for example, a well-known set of programs). Also, to conduct and assess the computation (or transmission) capabilities of a system using a well-known artifact.

Binary Black Hole Alliance
A group of astrophysicists who use HPCC technology to enable new ways to model the collision of two black holes.

Bit
An acronym for binary digit.

Bps, or B/s
An acronym for bytes per second.

bps, or b/s
An acronym for bits per second.

BRHR
Basic Research and Human Resources, a component of the original HPCC Program.

Browser
A system that provides access to and rendering of distributed information objects located at network-based repositories. That is, a service allowing a user to locate, access, and display information composed of text and still images; to animate moving images; and to play associated sound tracks. Mosaic is an example of a public-domain browser.

Byte
A group of adjacent binary digits operated upon as a unit (usually connotes a group of eight bits).

C
C programming language.

C++
C++ programming language, an object-oriented descendant of the C language.

CAETI
Computer Education and Training Initiative. Customizes digital resources for education, simulation, tutoring, and training.

CAVE
A surround screen, surround sound, projection based virtual reality (VR) system.

CCIC
Committee on Computing, Information, and Communications (formerly the Committee on Information and Communications) of the NSTC.

CIC
Committee on Information and Communications of the NSTC (currently CCIC).

CIC R&D
Computing, Information, and Communications R&D (formerly HPCCIT), part of CCIC.

Computational Science and Engineering
The systematic application of computing systems and computational solution techniques to mathematical models formulated to describe and simulate phenomena of scientific and engineering interest.

Computer Engineering
The creative application of engineering principles and methods to the design and development of hardware and software systems.

Computer Science
The systematic study of computing systems and computation. The body of knowledge resulting from this discipline contains theories for understanding computing systems and methods; design methodology, algorithms, and tools; methods for the testing of concepts; methods of analysis and verification; and knowledge representation and implementation.

CRPC
center for Research in Parallel Computation.

CTC
Cornell Theory center.

DAKOTA
Toolkit that aids in optimizing complex multidisciplinary designs. Has been used to improve chemical vapor decomposition reactors used in integrated circuit manufacturing.

DARPA
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of DOD. Formerly ARPA.

DCRT
Division of Computer Research and Technology, part of NIH.

DFS
Distributed File System.

Digital Libraries Initiative
Program that developed an interoperability protocol for interconnecting diverse libraries and services.

DII
Defense Information Infrastructure.

Distributed Visualization Project
Develops data compression algorithms that provide fast data browsing and interactive visualization capabilities.

DNA
Deoxyribonucleic Acid, a biomolecule from which genes are composed.

DOC
Department of Commerce.

DOD
Department of Defense.

DOE
Department of Energy.

DSM
Distributed Shared Memory.

D-System Project
Supports development tools and debugging aids for data parallel programs.

DTE
Domain and Type Enforcement.

ED
Department of Education.

EPA
Environmental Protection Agency.

ESNet
Energy Sciences Network.

ESS
Earth and Space Sciences.

ETHR
Education, Training, and Human Resources. One of the five Program Component Areas (see page 32).

Exa-
A prefix denoting 1018, or a million trillion ... (for example, exabytes).

FDDI
Fiber Distributed Data Interface.

FIDO
Toolkit for optimizing complex multidisciplinary designs.

Flops
Acronym for floating point operations per second. The term "floating point" refers to that format of numbers that is most commonly used for scientific calculation. Flops is used as a measure of a computing system's speed of performing basic arithmetic operations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing two numbers.

FNC
Federal Networking Council.

Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation
Melds observation data from satellites and other platforms into earth system models to provide more accurate predictions of physical phenomena.

G, or Giga-
A prefix denoting 109, or a billion ... (for example, Gflops or gigaflops; gigabytes, gigabits).

Gateway
A system that interconnects networks (or applications) that communicate using different protocols, and bridges their differences by transforming one protocol (message) into another.

GB
An acronym for Gigabyte.

Gb
An acronym for Gigabit.

Gb/s
Gigabits per second.

Gflops
Gigaflops, billions of floating point operations per second.

GII
Global Information Infrastructure.

GII Testbed
System created for SC '95 to accelerate development of distributed computing tools to meet the Grand and National Challenges and beyond. Features interactive 2- and 3-D scientific visualization and virtual reality demonstrations.

Grand Challenge
A fundamental problem in science and engineering, with broad economic and scientific impact, whose solution can be advanced by applying high performance computing techniques and resources.

HCS
High Confidence Systems. One of the five Program Component Areas (see page 32).

HECC
High End Computing and Computation. One of the five Program Component Areas (see page 31).

Heterogeneous system
A distributed system that contains more than one kind of computer.

HHS
Department of Health and Human Services.

High performance computing
The full range of advanced computing systems including workstations, networks of workstations with servers, scalable parallel systems, vector parallel systems, and more specialized systems. Scalable input/output interfaces, mass storage systems, and archival storage are components of these systems. Included also are system software and software development environments that enable users to view their workstations and the rest of their computing environments as a unified system.

HiPPI
High Performance Parallel Interface, 800 Mb/s.

HPCC
High Performance Computing and Communi-cations.

HPCCI
High Performance Computing and Communi-cations Initiative.

HPCCIT
High Performance Computing, Communi-cations, and Information Technology Sub-committee, part of the CIC (currently CIC R&D Subcommittee).

HPCS
High Performance Computing Systems, a component of the original HPCC Program.

HPF
High Performance Fortran.

HuCS
Human-centered Systems. One of the five Program Component Areas (see page 32).

IITA
Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications, a component of the original HPCC Program.

ImmersaDesk
A more portable version of CAVE.

I/O
Acronym for Input/Output.

Internet
The global collection of interconnected, multiprotocol computer networks including Federal, private, and international networks.

Interoperability
The ability of any two computers that are interconnected to understand each other and perform mutually supportive tasks such as client/server computing.

IP
Internet Protocol.

ISIS
Imaging Science and Information System. Under development as a system having the potential to detect and classify tiny precancerous formations (microcalcifications) in the breast. May be made locally available via telecommunications.

I-WAY
An experimental, high performance network project at SC'95 based on ATM technology linking over a dozen high performance computers and advanced visualization machines by integrating existing high bandwidth networks with telephone systems.

K, or Kilo-
A prefix denoting 103, or a thousand (for example, kilobits/second).

Kb/s
Kilobits per second or thousands of bits per second.

LANL
Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Lattice QCD
Discrete computational technique for determining the consequences of QCD theory from first principles.

LLNL
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

LSN
Large Scale Networking. One of the five Program Component Areas (see page 31).

M, or Mega-
A prefix denoting 106, or a million ... (for example, Mbps, or megabits per second; Mflops).

Math and Science Gateway
Internet link that connects students and educators to educational resources.

MB
An acronym for Megabyte.

Mb
An acronym for Megabit.

Mb/s
Megabits per second or millions of bits per second.

MBONE
Multicast backbone.

MDScope
Application that allows scientists to explore the attributes of macromolecules.

Medical Connections Program
Provides "jump start" funding to academic medical centers, community hospitals, and health care organizations to connect to the Internet.

MEDLARS
Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System. Provides rapid access to the National Library of Medicine's biomedical and health information.

Metacenter
A virtual supercomputing center composed of the networked high performance computing resources at several supercomputing centers.

Mflops
Megaflops, millions of floating point operations per second.

MIMD
Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data. An architectural paradigm for parallel computers.

Moore's Law
A rule of thumb stating that computing speed doubles every 18 months.

MosquitoNet
An experimental system developed to investigate issues such as seamless and transparent migration across different kinds of networks, variable bandwidth availability, data consistency issues due to frequent disconnections, and access to resources in the host environment.

MPI
Message Passing Interface.

MPP
Massively parallel processor.

MRAs
Metacenter Regional Alliance.

MSM
Multisurface Method. Uses linear programming and multiple separating hyperplanes to analyze fine needle aspiration for diagnosing breast cancer.

Multicast
A mode of communications that allows for simultaneous distribution of information to multiple designated recipients in a single transmission.

NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

National Challenge
A fundamental application that has broad and direct impact on the Nation's competitiveness and the well-being of its citizens, and that can benefit from the application of HPCC technology and resources.

National Information Infrastructure (NII)
The integration of hardware, software, and skills that will make it easy and affordable to connect people with each other, with computers, and with a vast array of services and information resources.

NCAR
National center for Atmospheric Research.

NCBI
National center for Biotechnology Information.

NCI
National Cancer Institute, part of NIH.

NCO
National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications.

NCRR
National center for Research Resources, part of NIH.

NCSA
National center for Supercomputing Applica-tions, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

NERSC
National Energy Research Supercomputer center.

Network
Computer communications technologies that link multiple computers to share information and resources across geographically dispersed locations.

NIH
National Institutes of Health, part of HHS.

NHSE
National High performance Software Exchange

NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of DOC.

NLM
National Library of Medicine, part of NIH.

NOAA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion, part of DOC.

NOWs
Network of Workstations.

NREN
National Research and Education Network, a component of the original HPCC Program.

NSA
National Security Agency, part of DOD.

NSF
National Science Foundation.

NSFNET
National Science Foundation computer network program.

NSTC
National Science and Technology Council.

Numerical Tokamak Project
Multidisciplinary effort to provide realistic simulations of tokamak plasma disturbances needed to optimize performance of fusion devices.

OMB
Office of Management and Budget.

Ops
Acronym for operations per second. Ops is used as a rating of the speed of computer systems and components. In this report ops is generally taken to mean the usual integer or floating point operations depending on what functional units are included in a particular system configuration.

Optoelectronic
A descriptor of technology which combines optical and electronic components.

ORNL
Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

OS
Operating system.

OSTP
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

PABLO and Paradyne
Tools to monitor behavior of application software.

Parallel processing
Simultaneous processing by more than one processing unit on a single application.

PCA
Program Component Area. Structure of the new Computing, Information, and Communications R&D programs. Each PCA spans an area in which multiple agencies have activities. The five PCAs are: High-End Computing and Computation (HECC); Large-Scale Networking (LSN); High Confidence Systems (HCS); Human-centered Systems (HuCS); and Human Resources, Education, and Training (HRET).

PGRT
Parallel Graph Reduction Tool. Tool for instrumentation and visualization of realtime embedded systems.

Peta-
A prefix denoting 1015, or a thousand trillion (for example, petabits).

PlantSTEP
A consortium of U.S. process, engineering, and construction industry leaders, including Bechtel, Black & Veatch, DuPont, Eastman Chemical, Merck, H.B. Zachry, Autodesk, Bentley, CadCentre, ComputerVision, Dassault Systems of America, EA Systems, Intergraph, Jacobus, John Brown Systems, Rebis, and Shaw/Sunland.

PSC
Pittsburgh Supercomputer center.

PVM
Parallel Virtual Machine.

QCD
Quantum Chromodynamics. Theory describing interactions between quarks and gluons.

R&D
Research and development.

RPM
Regional Particulate Model.

SALICIN
Climate data repository.

SC '95
SC 'XY (where XY is a year). General name of an annual conference on high performance computing and communications.

ScaLAPACK
Scalable Linear Algebra Package. A library of equation solvers and linear algebra routines.

Scalable
A system is scalable if it can be made to have more (or less) computational power by configuring it with a larger (or smaller) number of processors, amount of memory, interconnection bandwidth, input/output bandwidth, and amount of mass storage.

SDSC
San Diego Supercomputer center.

SHARE
Secure Heterogeneous Application Runtime Environment.

SIMD
Single Instruction Multiple Data.

SIO
Scalable I/O Initiative.

SONET
Synchronous Optical Network.

SRTOS
Scalable Realtime Operating System.

SS
Superstrings.

SUIF
A parallelizer using whole-program analysis to achieve a goal.

T, or Tera-
A prefix denoting 1012 or a trillion ... (for example, terabits, teraflops).

T1
Network transmission of a digital signal at 1.5 Mb/s (DS-1).

T3
Network transmission of a digital signal at 45 Mb/s (DS-3).

TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.

TRP
Technology Reinvestment Projects. Support ATM Interoperability Testbed for National Information Infrastructure and the SONET OC-192 ATM Self Healing Ring.

VA
Department of Veterans Affairs.

vBNS
Very high speed Backbone Network Services.

Visible Human Datasets
Detailed atlases of human anatomy at unprecedented resolution.

VLSI
Very Large Scale Integration. A type of computer chip.

VR
Virtual reality.

Web
A reference to the World Wide Web, which is a subset of the Internet supported by a related set of protocols, services, and software tools including browsers.

Wireless technologies
Communications technologies that use radio, microwave, or satellite communications channels versus wire, coaxial or optical fiber.

WWW
World Wide Web.

ZPL
An array based programming language for scientific computation.