National Science Foundation Solicitations
Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Observatories: Prototype
Systems to Address Cross-Cutting Needs (CEO:P)
Announcement Number: 06-505
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13517
High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Towards a Petascale
Computing Environment for Science and Engineering
Announcement Number 05-625
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13649
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently released these
solicitations:
"Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Observatories: Prototype
Systems to Address Cross-Cutting Needs (CEO:P)"
Announcement Number 06-505 can be viewed at:
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13517
Solicitation Synopsis
Spatially extensive observing systems for environmental research,
together with the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research on
the dynamics of complex environmental systems, create the need for a
sophisticated information infrastructure to support these observing
systems and to facilitate the integrated use of data from them. There
are a number of questions about how to best construct such a
cyberinfrastructure. To help answer these questions and to promote
planning for Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Observatories (CEO),
this solicitation requests proposals for the development of practical
environmental cyberinfrastructure prototypes along with a demonstration
of their capability to answer significant environmental research
questions. Proposals should be for projects that pursue an end-to-end
approach to an information infrastructure prototype. Proposals should
identify the types of data involved and the ways in which users might
wish to use such data. The proposed projects should include the careful
exploration of use cases followed by deployment of a prototype that
implements these use cases.
"High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Towards a Petascale
Computing Environment for Science and Engineering"
Announcement Number 05-625 can be viewed at:
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13649
With this solicitation, NSF requests proposals from organizations
willing to serve as high performance computing (HPC) Resource Providers,
and who propose to acquire and deploy a new, and/or upgrade an existing,
HPC system. Competitive HPC systems will:
- enable researchers to work on a range of computationally-challenging
science and engineering applications;
- incorporate reliable, robust system software essential to optimal
sustained performance; and
- provide a high degree of stability and usability.
A robust and effective HPC acquisition process, driven by the
requirements of the science and engineering research and education
community, is one of the key elements of NSF's HPC strategy. System
performance on an appropriate set of benchmarks will thus be a key
factor in system selection. These benchmarks will be designed to capture
the salient attributes of those science and engineering applications
placing the most stringent demands on the systems to be provisioned. The
performance requirements and benchmarks for this competition will be
posted on the NSF website at http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=OCI by
Thursday, 10 November 2005. Up to two awards will be made as a result of
this competition.