Introduction

Over the course of a two-month period, the NSE developers team, consisting of researchers at the member institutions of the Center for Research on Parallel Computation, have undertaken the task of producing a prototype of the National Software Exchange (NSE). The NSE is intended as an Internet-accessible resource which will facilitate the exchange of software and of information among research and computational scientists involved with High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC). The target audiences for the NSE include HPCC application and computer scientists, users of government supercomputer centers, and potential industrial users. The goals of the prototype are the following:

• Show the feasibility of distributing software and information via the National Information Infrastructure (NII).
• Demonstrate capabilities of existing software repositories.
• Demonstrate browsing and searching mechanisms.
• Identify limitations of current information services and areas needing further development.