Less clear is whether IT2 represents a quantum jump in the way the Administration funds computing or merely an elaboration of existing programs.
The agency has increasingly focused during the Bush administration on military and other classified projects, and pure research funds for computing at universities have declined.
Open image in new window Fig. 3 FVA blended funding curve computed from the ground up based on capital projections.
The International Monetary Fund recently computed a similar sized fiscal gap.
The partners, at their option, could then fund additional compute resources located close to the data to perform further analysis.
China's second ascent demonstrates the country's sustained commitment to funding high performance computing, says Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who closely follows international supercomputing trends.
(Last year, for instance, the U.K. government announced £500,000 in matched funding for expert computing organisations running programs to train teachers to deliver the tech-oriented new curriculum).
Telefonica has made a number of strategic investments over the years, including, most recently, participation in an $85 milion round of funding for cloud computing company Joyent, and it has lately also established a European incubator program called Wayra.
Other areas of interest for the firm's second fund include cloud computing, big data, cyber security, mobile technology and related fields.
So Trampoline Systems, the privately funded UK-based Enterprise socomputinguting startup, has today launched its new Sonar Dashboard tool designed to be a "Facebook for the enterprise".
