Please see the full solicitation for complete information about the funding opportunity. Below is a summary assembled by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO).

Program Summary听

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 Systems & Services program is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined 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.

This solicitation welcomes only Category II proposals.

Resources supported through awards from this solicitation will be incorporated into and allocated as part of NSF鈥檚 Innovative HPC program. This program complements investments in 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.

Deadlines

CU Internal Deadline: 11:59pm MT October 26, 2020

Sponsor Application Deadline: 5:00pm MT December 3, 2020

Internal Application Requirements (all in PDF format)

  • Project Description (3 pages maximum): Please include the following: intellectual merit, broader impacts, resource specification, S&E application performance, resource reliability and usability, project management and risk mitigation, data infrastructure, security, and operations plan (see the full NSF for further details on these elements).
  • PI Curriculum Vitae
  • Budget Overview (up to 1 page): A basic budget outlining project costs is sufficient; detailed OCG budgets are not required.

To access the online application, visit:

Eligibility

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.

These eligibility constraints will be strictly enforced in order to treat everyone fairly and consistently. In the event that an individual exceeds this limit, the proposal received within the limit will be accepted based on the earliest date and time of proposal submission (i.e., the first proposal received will be accepted and the remainder will be returned without review). No exceptions will be made.

Limited Submission Guidelines

An organization may submit only one proposal but may be a subawardee on other proposals responding to this solicitation. The restriction to no more than one submitted proposal as lead organization is to help ensure that there is appropriate organizational commitment necessary for responsible oversight, by the potential awardee organization, of a national resource.

Collaborative projects may only be submitted as a single proposal in which a single award is being requested (). The involvement of partner organizations should be supported through subawards administered by the submitting organization.

These eligibility constraints will be strictly enforced in order to treat everyone fairly and consistently. In the event that an organization exceeds this limit, the proposal received within the limit will be accepted based on the earliest date and time of proposal submission (i.e., the first proposal received will be accepted and the remainder will be returned without review). No exceptions will be made.

Award Information

Up to $5,000,000 per award for up to 5 years.

A total of $10,000,000 is available for this solicitation, subject to availability of funds. It is anticipated that 1-2 awards will be made in Category II at up to $5,000,000 per award for up to five years.

Review Criteria

Reviewers will be asked to assess the adequacy of the descriptions provided in the required sections of the Project Description (these are described in Section V.A. Proposal Preparation Instructions in the full solicitation):

  • Intellectual Merit:
    • Resource Specification;
    • S&E Application Performance;
    • Resource Reliability and Usability;
    • Project Management and Risk Mitigation;
    • Data Infrastructure;
    • Security;
    • Operations Plan; and
  • Broader Impacts.