Cyberinfrastructure

The notion of a “cyberinfrastructure” can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s research on high-computational capacity supercomputers and common goal–distributed grid computing. Today, cyberinfrastructure refers to large-scale computing networks used by interdisciplinary researchers and administrators to gain novel insights via the high-speed sharing of data resources. As one can tell by the name, cyberinfrastructure is a combination of the words cyber (relating to computers) and infrastructure (basic organizational structure); in simple terms, cyberinfrastructure means something like the “organization of computing resources.” An update of older, primarily physical infrastructures (e.g., highways systems, bridges, rail lines, the electric grid), cyberinfrastructures provide virtual and physical connections between supercomputers, databases, software, researchers, and institutions via the Internet. The end goal of most cyberinfrastructures is to spur innovation, ...