[Swift-commit] r5372 - wwwdev/about

[wilde at ci.uchicago.edu]

Author: wilde
Date: 2011-12-07 22:11:02 -0600 (Wed, 07 Dec 2011)
New Revision: 5372

Modified:
   wwwdev/about/index.php
Log:
Upate About text.

Modified: wwwdev/about/index.php
===================================================================
--- wwwdev/about/index.php	2011-12-08 03:35:14 UTC (rev 5371)
+++ wwwdev/about/index.php	2011-12-08 04:11:02 UTC (rev 5372)
@@ -22,7 +22,49 @@
 <!-- end .grid_12 -->
 
  <div class="grid_9">
-	<p> Swift incorporates several existing toolkits. </p> 
+<p>
+The Swift parallel scripting language enables scientists, engineers,
+and data analysts to express and coordinate parallel invocations of
+application programs on distributed and parallel computing platforms:
+one of the dominant modes of performing computation in science and
+engineering.
+</p>
+<p>
+Swift has been fruitfully employed in many diverse domains, including
+biochemistry, neuroscience, climate, earthquake
+simulation, hydrology, energy, economics, social network analysis,
+mass media analysis, materials science, and astronomy.  It runs on a
+variety of platforms, and enables users to move their application
+scripts between them with relative ease.  As personal computers become
+increasingly parallel, Swift enables users to leverage this parallel
+power with little or no experience in parallel programming. And Swift
+opens up complex cyberinfrastructure like the Open Science Grid,
+TeraGrid/XSEDE and FutureGrid to a wide range and scale of scientific
+user communities, broadening participation in high performance
+computing.
+</p>
+<p>
+Swift comprises a programming model, scripting language, and runtime
+engine.  Its implicitly parallel programming model allows users with
+minimal programming expertise to transparently utilize parallel and
+distributed systems. The scripting language is minimal and standalone,
+The Swift programming model has also been embedded into the highly
+popular R language for data analysis (via the SwiftR package), and has
+been experimentally embedded into Python via the PyDFlow package.
+</p>
+<p>
+Swift has been actively engaged in training and education in parallel
+computing.  From its inception, Swift has been leveraged as a base to
+broaden participation in scientific computing, and has created
+opportunities for, and leveraged the skills and contributions of
+numerous graduate and undergraduate students.
+Swift provides the parallel computing base for the secondary education
+project "I2U2: Interactions in Understanding the Universe,"
+(http://www.i2u2.org) which teaches the concepts of parallel and
+distributed computing to our next generation of scientists at the high
+school level.
+</p>
+<p> Swift incorporates several existing toolkits. </p> 
 
 <h4>Globus Toolkit</h4>
 <p>Swift uses the <a href="http://www.globus.org/" target="_blank">Globus Toolkit</a> as middleware to talk to various resources.</p>