This document takes two forms -- a printed report and its companion on-line version. Both were created using the networking and information-finding tools developed by the HPCC Program itself. While the printed report summarizes many of the Program's major accomplishments, the on-line version presents a more comprehensive record. Internet users can find that version and other information about the Program by using an Internet/World Wide Web (WWW) browser such as Mosaic (developed at the National center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)) to go to the following Uniform Resource Locator (URL):
That on-line version presents not only the text and images found in the printed report but also accesses the printed URLs to link to more detailed project descriptions from hundreds of HPCC research groups. Some of these include multimedia presentations. Because these groups update their information, the on-line version will be more current than the printed version. These URLs change over time, and the on-line version will attempt to provide the most current links.
The Internet is a global collection of interconnected, multi-protocol computer networks upon which these new capabilities run. Its evolution is described in Section II. 1. The World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is a set of protocols and services for identifying and accessing files located on computer "servers" on the Internet. WWW was initially developed at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland, to meet data management needs of the high energy physics community. More information about the intent of the original development is at:
These files are usually written in html (hypertext markup language), a subset of the federally-recognized Standard Generalized Markup Language. They may contain multimedia information (text, image, sound, and video) and hypertext, which is special text containing URLs that identify the locations of other files of (usually related) information located on any Internet/WWW server. Commonly an organization's server has a "home page" file that describes the organization and has hypertext "links" to other files on that server and elsewhere.
To access such information a user installs and runs an "Internet/WWW browser" (such as Mosaic, described opposite) on his/her "client," generally a workstation or personal computer that is connected to the Internet. The user requests information from a specific file on a specific server by providing the browser with the appropriate URL. The user can then follow the hypertext links in that file to other information. As these servers become numerous, the labyrinth of URLs becomes rich with conveniently accessible information. Material for this document was obtained by accessing such URLs, and the document in turn identifies more than 150 URLs. This method offers a new paradigm of how information can be easily organized, presented, and explored