About
In the past, large scale research computing was provided to University researchers through a central facility, which housed mainframe services. The national computational environment has changed, however, causing campus-based mainframe computer facilities to become obsolete. With an increase in the computing power of small and relatively inexpensive machines, many University researchers built their own independent computing infrastructures, creating unnecessary duplication in some cases and creating an additional administrative burden for research staff.
More recently, University researchers have been able to pool resources and collaborate with each other. This provides the campus with the unique opportunity to support projects more effectively in terms of cost and collaboration. UW-Madison is also well-positioned to help researchers exchange large amounts of data with colleagues and to collaborate globally through our 10 GB/sec 21st Century Network. The Network allows researchers to effectively access and utilize regional, national and international research resources and collaborators participating in projects like the Open Science Grid, TeraGrid, high performance computing centers (e.g., National Center for Supercomputing Applications), and unique research instruments such as the Large Hadron Collider.
Several large-scale computing-intensive initiatives are already well-established at UW-Madison. Some of these are specific to individual research initiatives and others collaborate under the auspices of the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC), which assembles hardware, software and staff resources to meet the needs of researchers and scientists with computing-intensive applications, and the Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW).
In 2006, a group of primarily DoIT staff formed to address specific research support needs. The group re-chartered itself in 2007 as the Research Support and Services Working Group (RSSWG), under the leadership of Ken Frazier, who was serving as the interim director of DoIT. RSSWG included members from across campus, and they began doing outreach to campus and hosting educational forums. In 2008, with the hiring of the first CIO and Vice Provost, Ron Kraemer, a Research Computing Executive Committees was formed to further build the campus research computing infrastructure.