Our plan for achieving this vision is a layered effort, with the layers being developed in parallel. The first layer is the physical networking infrastructure, which is already being developed and implemented by the campus service provider, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT). Cornell has long been a leader in networking, and its new high-speed switched backbone and innovative Cells-In-Frames delivery system will provide high-bandwidth networking to every desktop on campus. A fast, low-latency network is critical to taking advantage of high-performance desktop computing to deliver information in a distributed, interactive manner.

In the second layer, the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments will develop base software technologies in high-bandwidth/low-latency networking, quality of service, reliable distributed computing, scalable computation resources, safe code migration ("agents" and "servlets"), multimedia information delivery, and collaboration systems.

The project will be managed by an executive team made up of the three principal investigators. They will be responsible for the overall implementation of the program and will oversee the various components, including budget management, equipment installation and reporting to Intel. The executive team will convene two groups. The Cornell/Intel Faculty Group (CIFG) will be comprised of the faculty leading the individual projects that receive Intel equipment. Each of these faculty members will designate a lead staff member who is responsible for the Intel Architecture transition in their group. These computing support staff will form the Cornell/Intel Developers Group (CIDG). The campus information services provider, CIT, will take a lead role in coordinating the CIDG. CIT is in the process of building a base of Intel and NT expertise in anticipation of a transition from mainframe and Unix-based servers to NT-based servers for administrative and student services. As part of this effort, CIT will administer the training that we have requested. CIT’s active role in the CIDG will provide a great opportunity for leveraging experience between the proposed project and Cornell’s central computing support organization.

The CIFG will meet quarterly. It will focus on common issues in realizing the vision of this proposal and in developing innovative new research and teaching systems on Intel Architecture machines. We expect that each CIFG meeting will have a few brief presentations by faculty about aspects of the successes or problems their group has had that would be of use to all the groups. The CIFG will also focus on future steps for either expanding the projects or upgrading the technology. The CIDG will meet monthly during the first year of the project, and quarterly after that. This group will focus on the problems of installation, integration, systems management, porting of code and other challenges that individual groups encounter. The CIDG will be the primary group for sharing technical expertise about support of Intel Architecture machines on campus.

The executive team will communicate regularly with Intel Corporation. Each year, the project management will submit an annual report. This report will include results in the core research program, including benchmarks as components come into use by other groups. The investigator of each research or curriculum development project will also explain the progress to-date in his/her area and will highlight special challenges or opportunities uncovered during the year. Those who are involved in porting and testing codes on IA machines will report on the performance of their particular testbeds. In other cases, various simulation packages will be explored and pushed to their limits, with researchers providing feedback to Intel on how these packages perform on Intel Architecture.