omputing, which need physical proximity and operating homogeneity, grids can be geographi- cally distributed and heterogeneous. Like virtualization technologies, grid computing enables the virtualization of IT resources. Unlike virtualization technologies, which virtualize a single system, grid computing enables the vir- tualization of vast and disparate IT resources. 5.4 INFOSTRUCTURE The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $13.5 million over five years to a consortium led by the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The funds will support design and development of a powerful distributed cyber "infostructure" to support data-intensive scientific research and collaboration. Initial application efforts will be in bioscience and earth sciences research, including environmental, seismic, and remote sensing. It is one of the largest information technology research (ITR) grants awarded since the NSF established the program in 2000. INFOSTRUCTURE Dubbed the "OptIPuter"-for optical networking, Internet protocol, and computer storage and processing-the envisioned infostructure will tightly couple computational, storage, and visualization resources over parallel optical networks with the IP communication mechanism. "The opportunity to build and experiment with an OptIPuter has arisen because of major tech- nology changes in the last five years," says principal investigator Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology [Cal-(IT)2], and Harry E. Gruber Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. "Optical band- width and storage capacity are growing much faster than processing power, turning the old computing paradigm on its head: we are going from a proces- sor-centric world, to one centered on optical bandwidth, where the networks will be faster than the computational resources they connect." The OptIPuter project will enable scientists who are generating massive am