Overview of the NHSE

The National HPCC Software Exchange (NHSE) is an Internet-accessible resource that facilitates the exchange of software and of information among research and computational scientists involved with High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) [&make_named_href('', "node19.html#NHSE-cse","[1]")] . The NHSE facilitates the development of discipline-oriented software repositories and promotes contributions to and use of such repositories by Grand Challenge teams, as well as other members of the high performance computing community.

The expected benefits from successful deployment of the NHSE include the following:

• Faster development of better-quality software so that scientists can spend less time writing and debugging programs and more time on research problems.
• Reduction of duplication of software development effort by sharing of software.
• Reduction of time and effort spent in locating relevant software and information through the use of appropriate indexing and search mechanisms and domain-specific expert help systems.
• Reduction of duplication of effort in evaluating software by sharing software review and evaluation information.

The scope of the NHSE is software and software-related artifacts produced by and for the HPCC Program. Software-related artifacts include algorithms, specifications, designs, and software documentation. The following three types of software being made available:

• Systems software and software tools. This category includes parallel processing tools such as parallel compilers, message-passing communication subsystems, and parallel monitors and debuggers.
• Basic building blocks for accomplishing common computational and communication tasks. These building blocks will be of high quality and transportable across platforms. Building blocks are meant to be used by Grand Challenge teams and other researchers in implementing programs to solve computational problems. Use of high-quality transportable components will speed implementation, as well as increase the reliability of computed results.
• Research codes that have been developed to solve difficult computational problems. Many of these codes will have been developed to solve specific problems and thus will not be reusable as is. Rather, they will serve as proofs of concept and as models for developing general-purpose reusable software for solving broader classes of problems.