Are you TeraGrid curious? The Monkey started a four part series on the NSF TeraGrid on Sunday; you can read the first installment (by Michael Schneider, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) here.
From the opening of the article
Deep, wide, open. This three-pronged conceptualization underlies the TeraGrid, the National Science Foundation’s cyberinfrastructure initiative. “Deep” means digital muscle—more than a petaflop of aggregated computing power, highlighted by the addition of NSF “track 2” systems, Ranger (579 tflops) and Kraken (607 tflops). “Open” means extensibility, the ability to include new resource providers and university partnerships to broaden the resource base.
“Wide” means that the TeraGrid wants its resources to be useful to as many researchers as possible. To that end, TeraGrid has created “Science Gateways” — diverse entry points for the uninitiated to pass into the realm of computational science and get things done with the array of resources available through TeraGrid. Implemented in 2005, the Science Gateways program, led by Nancy Wilkins-Diehr of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has grown rapidly and now comprises 35 Gateways—each of them tailored to the needs of and designed by a specific research community.
If you’re interested in that series, keep an eye on the Cluster Monkey site. I may not remember to point to the others when they are published. Hey, I do my best, but there is a lot going on here at insideHPC HQ.