In January 2008, QCIF was successful in securing a third round of funding from the Queensland State Government for the period December 2007 - November 2010.

QCIF was closely aligned to (and a formal member of) the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC).  In moving forward from APAC, QCIF has become a partner in the Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) which is a newly established program that will provide underlying support to Australian researchers across all disciplines. ARCS has been funded by the Federal Government as part of the NCRIS “Platforms for Collaboration” program for a period of 4 years, and in particular is charged with the provision of the Interoperability and Collaboration Infrastructure.

In May 2000, the Queensland Government committed an initial $10 million over three years to develop a visualisation capability and to further develop supercomputing facilities at the University of Queensland that would be available to all Queensland based universities. This attracted $2.5 million of Commonwealth funds via the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), with a further $2.5 million of member university matching funds.

The Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF), formerly known as the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation (QPSF), is a consortium of Queensland universities formed with the objective to increase the State's innovative capacity through deployment and exploitation of advanced computing and communications infrastructure – supercomputers, high-capacity data archives, visualisation and networking capability. QCIF's infrastructure and eResearch support staff underpin R&D in its member universities, and stimulate uptake of advanced ICT by Queensland's industries.

The State's initial investment in the establishment of QCIF allowed Queensland universities through QCIF to access additional Commonwealth Government funding, including:

• $2.5 million from the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) expertise program;
• a further $2.5 million of matching funds from the QCIF member universities, for dedicated HPC salaries and maintenance;
• $500,000 through to 2005, from the Department of Communications and Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) through GrangeNet to fund Access Grid deployment and staff in Queensland; and
• $5.5 million grant to James Cook University to fund the Queensland Regional Education Network (QREN) deployment to Rockhampton and Townsville.

QCIF was established in September 2001 as an incorporated body with Board members being drawn from each Member University and the Queensland Government.