SDSC was established under a cooperative agreement by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in collaboration with UC San Diego and GA Technologies, as the U.S. sought to increase its overall investment in computing to support scientific research. Sid Karin, SDSC’s founder and first director – who sent an unsolicited proposal to the NSF to create the facility – noted that SDSC was among the first centers to provide interactive access to scientists across a wide range of domains, who soon began to realize the value that the first supercomputers could bring to their research.