ACADEMIA

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) recently awarded its first data allocation to organizations who collectively requested more than 448 Terabytes of storage space. SDSC currently has more than 3 petabytes in tape and disk storage. After consideration, allocations were made, dedicating more than 98 terabytes of disk storage and 140 terabytes of tape storage to 7 organizations throughout the country. Data Central is the first program of its kind to support a number of large community data collections and databases. In addition to providing hosting and long-term archiving, Data Central allows users to make their data collections publicly available to a wide community of potential users. Currently, the largest data allocation hosted at SDSC is from the National Virtual Observatory and accounts for more than 44 Terabytes of storage space. Other current and new data collections include information from the Geosciences Network (GEON), NEXRAD and field data from Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO). SDSC also provides 140 Terabytes of tape storage to the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The projects will use resources at the following NSF-supported sites: San Diego Supercomputer Center, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, along with six other TeraGrid partner sites: the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, Austin; the Center for Advanced Computing Research at Caltech; Argonne National Laboratory; Purdue University; Indiana University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The next series of allocations will be reviewed and announced in late January 2006. The center already has a few pending applications. To learn more, go to www.datacentral.com.