I'd like to explore the idea behind CyberINFOstructure a bit further. How is this different from the CyberINFRAstructure? What is meant by this distinction?

To date, a lot of high performance computing and the related infrastructure is around computing -- cpu, performance, bandwitdth and throughput. The focus seems to be on the bottom layer, the infrastrcuture if you will.

The information that lives on top of this has been given some cycles, but generally in a specific manner related to a problem at hand. I believe there needs to be a more concerted effort to understand and create a more reliable infostrcture on top of this infrastructure. This layer should support:

• Information and source discovery
• Information pedigree
  
• Information access
• Information classification and semantics
• Information composition
  
• Information translation

These capabilities reside on top of the basic infrastructure and provide common facilities for applications to access and use information that resides within the grid/enterprise/world.

I'll dig deeper into each of these topics next.