The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations willing to serve as service providers (SPs) within the NSF Innovative High-Performance Computing (HPC) program to provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) capabilities and/or services in production operations to support the full range of computational- and data-intensive research across all of science and engineering (S&E). The Advanced Computing Sustems and Services program is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined in this solicitation to include systems and/or services, 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; and
- 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.
NOTEL 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.
Award Information:
Anticipated Type of Award: Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: 2
The length of the award may vary depending on the type of resource funded. However, in most cases, it is expected to be up to 5 years. The details are described in the section entitled Program Requirements and should be carefully considered.
Anticipated Funding Amount: $5,000,000 per award. A total of $10,000,000 is available for this solicitation, subject to the availability of funds. It is anticipated that 1-2 awards will be made at up to $5,000,000 per award for up to five years.
Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI: 1
An individual may be the PI or co-PI on no more than one proposal that responds to this solicitation. There is no limit on the number of proposals with which an individual may be associated in other capacities, such as senior personnel.
Interested applicants should send the following documents in sequence in one PDF file (File name: Last name_NSF 19-587_2019) no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
Cover Page:
- Principal Investigator’s (PI's) names and departmental affiliation
- Co-PI's names and departmental affiliation(s)
- A list of possible participating organizations (if applicable)
- Proposal Title and Category
Project Description (no more than two pages):
- Identify the project scope that addresses the key aspects and elements outlined in the NSF solicitation, principal investigators, collaborators, and partner organizations.
2-page current NSF Bio-sketch for all PIs and Co-PIs.
Formatting Guidelines:
- Font/size: Times New Roman (12 pt.)
- Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
- Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)