Jeffrey Mervis
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to concentrate its $65 million a year supercomputing program at two university-based megacenters and phase out support for two other centers. That is good news for scientists at the University of Illinois and the University of California, San Diego, which have ambitious plans to develop the next generation of high-end computing hardware and applications with partners around the country, and bad news for officials at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing and Cornell Theory centers, which have 2 years to plug the hole left by NSF's departure.