Funding Alert: $5M for Advanced Computing Systems & Services

$5M is available for service providers offering advanced cyber-infrastructure capabilities and/or services to support computing and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E).

Details

Closing date: December 3, 2020
Expected number of awards: 1
Award amount: $5,000,000
How to apply: Start here

What is the National Science Foundation?

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future. This type of support:

  • Is a primary driver of the U.S. economy.
  • Enhances the nation’s security.
  • Advances knowledge to sustain global leadership.

With an annual budget of $8.3 billion (FY 2020), it is the funding source for approximately 25 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing.

Why Advanced Computing Systems & Services?

The NSF is requesting service providers for their Innovative High-Performance Computing (HPC) program to provide advanced cyber-infrastructure (CI) capabilities and/or services to support computational- and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E).

The Advanced Computing Systems & Services program complements previous NSF investments by provisioning resources in two categories:

  • Category I, Capacity Systems: production computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation and data analytics needs in S&E research
  • Category II, Innovative Prototypes/Testbeds: innovative forward-looking capabilities deploying novel technologies, architectures, usage modes, etc., and exploring new target applications, methods, and paradigms for S&E discoveries.

How does this funding work?

This solicitation welcomes only Category II proposals.

Resources supported through awards from this solicitation will be incorporated into and allocated as part of NSF’s Innovative HPC program. This program complements investments in leadership-class computing and funds a federation of nationally-available HPC resources that are technically diverse and intended to enable discoveries at a computational scale beyond the research of individual or regional institutions of higher education.

NSF anticipates that at least 90% of the provisioned system or services will be available to the S&E community through an open peer-reviewed national allocation process and be supported by community and other support services [such as those currently supported through eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) 2.0 project-managed allocations recommended by the XSEDE Resource Allocation Committee (XRAC), and other activities intended to foster efficient coordination across resources], or an NSF-approved alternative that may emerge.

If this is not feasible for the proposed system/services, proposers must clearly explain in detail why this is the case and how they intend to make the proposed system/services available to the national S&E community.

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