Founded in 2004, the consortium is composed of service and resource providers, researchers from universities and national laboratories, as well as computing centers across the United States.
Members independently own and manage the resources which make up the distributed facility, and consortium agreements provide the framework for technological and organizational integration.
The grid has been designed so that resources and data are shared automatically: It's really driven not so much by where the physicists come from, but what their interests are.
The grid's architecture has been studied by many researchers in the fields of computer science and information systems.
[10] The consortium is funded by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, and has received a $30 million joint grant.