[Federal Register Volume 65, Number 244 (Tuesday, December 19, 2000)]
[Notices]
[Pages 79346-79350]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 00-32250]
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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice 01-07:
SciDAC--Integrated Software Infrastructure Centers
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice inviting research grant applications.
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SUMMARY: The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (OASCR)
of the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby
announces its interest in receiving
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applications for projects in the Integrated Software Infrastructure
Centers (ISIC) component of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced
Computing (SciDAC) research program. The software infrastructure vision
of SciDAC is for a comprehensive, portable, and fully integrated suite
of systems software and tools for the effective management and
utilization of terascale computational resources by SciDAC
applications. This infrastructure will provide maximum performance,
robustness, portability and ease of use to application developers, end
users, and system administrators. Successful ISIC activities must
establish and maintain close interactions with other ISIC activities
and SciDAC efforts, and it is essential that they address the complete
software lifecycle including transition of successful research software
to robust production software and appropriate mechanisms for long term
software support and evolution. Partnerships among universities,
national laboratories, and industry are encouraged. The full text of
Program Notice 01-07 is available via the Internet using the following
web site address: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.
DATES: Preapplications referencing Program Notice 01-07 should be
received by January 31, 2001.
Formal applications in response to this notice should be received
by 4:30 p.m., E.S.T., March 15, 2001, to be accepted for merit review
and funding in FY 2001.
ADDRESSES: Preapplications referencing Program Notice 01-07 should be
sent via e-mail using the following address:
[email protected].
Formal applications referencing Program Notice 01-07, should be
forwarded to: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Grants and
Contracts Division, SC-64, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874-
1290, ATTN: Program Notice 01-07. This address must be used when
submitting applications by U.S. Postal Service Express Mail or any
commercial mail delivery service, or when hand-carried by the
applicant.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Frederick C. Johnson, Office of
Science, U.S. Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown,
MD 20874-1290, telephone: (301) 903-5800, E-mail: [email protected],
fax: (301) 903-7774.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing
Advanced scientific computing will be a key contributor to
scientific research in the 21st Century. Within the Office of Science
(SC), scientific computing programs and facilities are already
essential to progress in many areas of research critical to the nation.
Major scientific challenges exist in all SC research programs that can
best be addressed through advances in scientific supercomputing, e.g.,
designing materials with selected properties, elucidating the structure
and function of proteins, understanding and controlling plasma
turbulence, and designing new particle accelerators. To help ensure its
missions are met, SC is bringing together advanced scientific computing
and scientific research in an integrated program entitled ``Scientific
Discovery Through Advanced Computing.''
The Opportunity and the Challenge
Extraordinary advances in computing technology in the past decade
have set the stage for a major advance in scientific computing. Within
the next five to ten years, computers 1,000 times faster than today's
computers will become available. These advances herald a new era in
scientific computing. Using such computers, it will be possible to
dramatically extend our exploration of the fundamental processes of
nature (e.g., the structure of matter from the most elementary
particles to the building blocks of life,) as well as advance our
ability to predict the behavior of a broad range of complex natural and
engineered systems (e.g., the earth's climate or an automobile engine).
To exploit this opportunity, these computing advances must be
translated into corresponding increases in the performance of the
scientific codes used to model physical, chemical, and biological
systems. This is a daunting problem. Current advances in computing
technology are being driven by market forces in the commercial sector,
not by scientific computing. Harnessing commercial computing technology
for scientific research poses problems unlike those encountered in
previous supercomputers, in magnitude as well as in kind. As noted in
the 1998 report \1\ from the NSF/DOE ``National Workshop on Advanced
Scientific Computing'' and the 1999 report \2\ from the President's
Information Technology Advisory Committee, this problem will only be
solved by increased investments in computer software--in research and
development on scientific simulation codes as well as on the
mathematical and computing systems software that underlie these codes.
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\1\ This workshop was sponsored by the National Science
Foundation and the Department of Energy and hosted by the National
Academy of Sciences on July 30-31, 1998. Copies of the report may be
obtained from:
\2\ Copies of the PITAC report may be obtained from: http://www.ccic.gov/ac/report/.
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Investment Plan of the Office of Science
To meet the challenge posed by the new generation of terascale
computers, SC will fund a set of coordinated investments as outlined in
its long-range plan for scientific computing, Scientific Discovery
through Advanced Computing,\3\ submitted to Congress on March 30, 2000.
First, it will create a Scientific Computing Software Infrastructure
that bridges the gap between the advanced computing technologies being
developed by the computer industry and the scientific research programs
sponsored by the Office of Science. Specifically, the SC effort
proposes to:
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\3\ Copies of the SC computing plan, Scientific Discovery
through Advanced Computing, can be downloaded from SC website at:
http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/octr/index.html.
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Create a new generation of Scientific Simulation Codes
that take full advantage of the extraordinary computing capabilities of
terascale computers.
Create the Mathematical and Computing Systems Software to
enable the Scientific Simulation Codes to effectively and efficiently
use terascale computers.
Create a Collaboratory Software Environment to enable
geographically-separated scientists to effectively work together as a
team and to facilitate remote access to both facilities and data.
These activities are supported by a Scientific Computing Hardware
Infrastructure that will be tailored to meet the needs of its research
programs. The Hardware Infrastructure is robust, to provide the stable
computing resources needed by the scientific applications; agile, to
respond to innovative advances in computer technology that impact
scientific computing; and flexible, to allow the most appropriate and
economical resources to be used to solve each class of problems.
Specifically, the SC proposes to support:
A Flagship Computing Facility, the National Energy
Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), to provide the robust,
high-end computing resources needed by a broad range of scientific
research programs.
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Topical Computing Facilities to provide computing
resources tailored for specific scientific applications and to serve as
the focal point for an application community as it strives to optimize
its use of terascale computers.
Experimental Computing Facilities to assess the promise of
new computing technologies being developed by the computer industry for
scientific applications.
Both sets of investments will create exciting opportunities for
teams of researchers from laboratories and universities to create new
revolutionary computing capabilities for scientific discovery.
The Benefits
The Scientific Computing Software Infrastructure, along with the
upgrades to the hardware infrastructure, will enable laboratory and
university researchers to solve the most challenging scientific
problems faced by the Office of Science at a level of accuracy and
detail never before achieved. These developments will have significant
benefit to all of the government agencies who rely on high-performance
scientific computing to achieve their mission goals as well as to the
U.S. high-performance computing industry.
Background
Integrated Software Infrastructure Centers
This solicitation addresses the Mathematical and Computing Systems
Software Environment element of the SciDAC Scientific Computing
Software Infrastructure. ISIC envisions a comprehensive, integrated,
scalable, and robust high performance software infrastructure, which
overcomes difficult technical challenges to enable the effective use of
terascale systems by SciDAC applications. ISIC addresses needs for: New
algorithms which scale to parallel systems having thousands of
processors; methodology for achieving portability and interoperability
of complex high performance scientific software packages; operating
systems tools and support for the effective management of terascale and
beyond systems; and effective tools for feature identification, data
management and visualization of petabyte-scale scientific data sets.
ISIC provides the essential computing and communications infrastructure
for support of SciDAC applications. The ISIC effort encompasses a
multi-discipline approach with activities in:
Algorithms, methods, and libraries--Algorithms, methods
and libraries that are fully scalable to many thousands of processors
with full performance portability.
Program development environments and tools--Component-
based, fully integrated, terascale program development and runtime
tools, which scale effectively and provide maximum utility and ease-of-
use to developers and scientific end users.
Operating system software and tools--Systems software that
scales to tens of thousands of processors, supports high performance
application-level communication and provides the highest levels of
fault tolerance, reliability, manageability, and ease of use for system
administrators, tool developers and end users.
Visualization and data management systems--Scalable,
intuitive systems fully supportive of SciDAC application requirements
for moving, storing, analyzing, querying, manipulating and visualizing
multi-petabytes of scientific data and objects.
The complexity of these challenges and the strong emphasis on
scalability, interoperability and portability requires novel approaches
in the proposed technical research and the research management
structure. ISIC emphasizes the formation of Enabling Technologies
Centers (ETC) as an organizational basis for successful applications.
An ETC is a virtual multi-institution, multi-disciplinary team which
will:
Create mathematical and/or computing systems software to
enable scientific simulation codes to take full advantage of the
extraordinary capabilities of terascale computers;
Work closely with application teams and other SciDAC teams
to ensure that the most critical computer science and applied
mathematics issues are addressed in a timely and comprehensive fashion;
and
Address all aspects of the successful research software
lifecycle including transition of a research code into a robust
production code and long term software evolution and maintenance and
end user support.
Solicitation Emphasis
This notice is one of several that addresses the initial
requirements of the SciDAC program. The focus is on four topics: (1)
Algorithms, methods and libraries; (2) program development environments
and tools; (3) operating systems software and tools; and (4)
visualization and data management. Responses to this notice may propose
work in one or more of these areas and may be single institution
efforts or partnerships that involve many organizations. It is expected
that most, if not all, of the proposed activities will be organized as
ETCs. Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the
following examples listed for each subtopic:
(1) Algorithms, Methods and Mathematical Libraries
(a) Mesh generation and discretization technology. Tools to
facilitate the generation and partitioning of all types of meshes
(structured, unstructured, and chimera (overlapping)) designed for many
thousands of processors.
(b) Mathematical analysis and scalable numerical algorithms.
Mathematical methods to help SciDAC applications achieve high
performance on hierarchical memory terascale computers such as
multiscale analysis, multilevel methods, and fast transforms capable of
spanning multiple spatial and temporal scales. Resultant algorithms
must be deployed in component-based mathematical software and made
available to a broad range of DOE mission areas.
(2) Program Development Environment and Tools
(a) High Performance Component Architectures. Component technology
that builds upon and extends commercial component architectures to
support high performance parallel components, low-latency, high
bandwidth communication among components, and efficient data and work
redistribution.
(b) Code Design and Development Tools. Scaling methodology to
deploy existing parallel code development environments on multi-
teraflops SciDAC systems. Support for multi-language applications
including C, C++, UPC, Fortran, Co-Array Fortran, Python and Java;
parallel programming libraries, such as MPI, OpenMP, thread libraries,
the Global Array library; and multi-level hierarchical memory
programming models.
(c) Code Correctness and Validation. Debugging tools that implement
emerging community standards in parallel debuggers and automated data
dependency analysis. Relative debugging methodology for comparing at
run time the execution of two versions of a code.
(d) Performance Tools. Evaluation of existing research and
commercial performance analysis tools, both tracefile-based and
dynamic, for scalability and suitability for SciDAC applications.
Performance metrics and benchmarks which enable reliable and credible
performance predictions of application codes on terascale and
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larger systems. Tools which link hardware counters to meaningful
terascale system performance characteristics and application
performance.
(2) Operating System Software and Tools
(a) Terascale System Resource Management. Modular infrastructure
for resource management on terascale clusters including resource
scheduling, meta-scheduling, node daemon support, comprehensive usage
accounting and user interfaces that also emphasizes portability to
terascale vendor operating systems.
(b) Terascale System Support. Scalable checkpointing and improved
runtime steering for early deployment. Methodology for analyzing
tradeoffs between fault tolerance and peak performance. Support for
robust runtime job management and I/O systems that are tolerant of
component failure. Scalable tools for system administration including
initial system boot, system updates, job launch and system utilities.
(c) High Performance Communication. Operating system support for
application level communication which scales to thousands of
processors, provides minimum latency and maximum bandwidth between
parallel application processes. Innovative approaches to terascale
operating system architectures including non-uniform kernel support for
computational, service, interactive and i/o nodes.
(4) Visualization and Data Management
(a) Data Management Systems. Data exchange methods and
standardizations that facilitate collaborative applications. Innovative
Database Management Systems (DBMS) approaches for high throughput
parallel I/O and complex queries of large scientific databases.
Hierarchical data storage systems involving tertiary storage media that
are sequential. Agent methodology for feature extraction and complex
query operations. Tools for user-driven and automatic clustering,
reclustering or replication of objects to maximize retrieval
efficiency. Collaborations with the DBMS and tertiary storage vendor
industry are encouraged.
(b) Visualization. Vector/tensor field visualization in 3-D. Modes
of visualization for interpretation and understanding of large
datasets. Remote and collaborative visualization methods.
Characterization of simulation, experimental and visualization errors/
uncertainties. Adaptive, multiresolution, parallel and scalable
visualization algorithms. Innovative techniques for exploring multi-
dimensional, multi-discipline data sets.
Collaborations with the high performance hardware and software
vendor industry are encouraged wherever appropriate.
Integration of Software Components and Tools
Responses to this notice should cover the full range of activities
from basic research to development of software that can be deployed to
the SciDAC applications communities. It is critical that these
submissions demonstrate effective strategies for coupling with
requirements from applications researchers and ensuring that software
developed will interoperate with software developed by other ISIC
activities and be effectively deployed to SciDAC computing facilities
and applications groups.
ISIC envisions a fully integrated software environment that
provides both robustness and ease of use to the end user application
scientist. Implementation of this vision will be coordinated through a
participatory management process with input from ISIC teams and other
key participants of SciDAC. As component and tool implementations
mature, each team will be expected to develop the necessary technology
to fully and smoothly incorporate their software tools into the ISIC
environment.
ISIC activities play a critical cross-cutting role in the SciDAC.
ISIC goals require significant interactions, ranging from the joint
development and deployment of tools and technologies into the
applications community, to the incorporation of needed capabilities
into new products and systems. ISIC researchers will need to interact
closely with diverse groups including: applications scientists, vendor
providers, the DOE ASCI program, and other federal agency programs
addressing complementary goals. To support and facilitate the maximum
impact of the SciDAC Scientific Computing Software Infrastructure, high
emphasis will be placed on ensuring that source code is fully and
freely available for use and modification throughout the scientific
computing community.
This solicitation is focused on larger ETC efforts in support of
the SciDAC program. Applications to the OASCR base program through the
Continuing Solicitation for all Office of Science Programs Notice 01-
01, found at http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html,
which may have the potential for contributing to the ISIC software
infrastructure, should so indicate.
Collaboration
Applicants are encouraged to collaborate with researchers in other
institutions, such as: universities, industry, non-profit
organizations, federal laboratories and Federally Funded Research and
Development Centers (FFRDCs), including the DOE National Laboratories,
where appropriate, and to include cost sharing wherever feasible.
Additional information on collaboration is available in the Application
Guide for the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program that is
available via the Internet at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/Colab.html.
Program Funding
It is anticipated that up to $7 million annually will be available
for multiple awards for these components of the ISIC program. Initial
awards will be made in FY 2001 in the categories described above, and
applications may request project support for up to five years. All
awards are contingent on the availability of funds, research progress,
and programmatic needs. Annual budgets for successful ISIC projects are
expected to range from $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 per project. Annual
budgets may increase in the out-years but should remain within the
overall annual maximum guidance. Any proposed effort that exceeds the
annual maximum in the out-years should be separately identified for
potential award increases if additional funds become available.
Preapplications
Preapplications are strongly encouraged but not required prior to
submission of a full application. However, notification of a successful
preapplication is not an indication that an award will be made in
response to the formal application. The preapplication should identify
on the cover sheet the institution, Principal Investigator name(s),
address(s), telephone, and fax number(s) and E-mail address(es), title
of the project, and the field of scientific research. A brief (one-
page) vitae should be provided for each Principal Investigator. The
preapplication should consist of a two to three page narrative
describing the research project objectives, the approach to be taken,
and a description of any research partnerships. Preapplications will be
reviewed by DOE relative to the scope and research needs of the ISIC
program.
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Merit Review
Applications will be subjected to scientific merit review (peer
review) and will be evaluated against the following evaluation criteria
listed in descending order of importance as codified at 10 CFR
605.10(d):
1. Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project,
2. Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach,
3. Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed
Resources,
4. Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget.
The evaluation of applications under item 1, Scientific and
Technical Merit, will pay particular attention to:
(a) The potential of the proposed project to make a significant
impact in the effectiveness of SciDAC applications researchers;
(b) The demonstrated capabilities of the applicants to perform
basic research related to ISIC and transform these research results
into software that can be widely deployed;
(c) The likelihood that the algorithms, methods, mathematical
libraries, and software components that result from this effort will
have impact on science disciplines outside of the SciDAC applications
projects;
(d) Identification and approach to software integration and long
term support issues, including component technology, documentation,
test cases, tutorials, end user training, and quality maintenance and
evolution.
The evaluation under item 2, Appropriateness of the Proposed Method
or Approach, will also consider the following elements related to
Quality of Planning:
(a) Quality of the plan for effective coupling to applications
researchers;
(b) Quality of plan for ensuring interoperability and integration
with software produced by other ISIC and SciDAC efforts;
(b) Viability of plan for deployment of software to SciDAC
facilities and applications groups;
(c) Knowledge of and coupling to other efforts in high performance
scientific computing software such as the DOE ACTS program, the DOE
ASCI program and the NSF ITR program;
(d) Quality and clarity of proposed work schedule and deliverables.
Note that external peer reviewers are selected with regard to both
their scientific expertise and the absence of conflict-of-interest
issues. Non-federal reviewers may be used, and submission of an
application constitutes agreement that this is acceptable to the
investigator(s) and the submitting institution. Reviewers will be
selected to represent expertise in the technology areas proposed,
applications groups that are potential users of the technology, and
related programs in other Federal Agencies or parts of DOE, such as the
Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) within DOE's National
Nuclear Security Administration.
Information about the development and submission of applications,
eligibility, limitations, evaluation, selection process, and other
policies and procedures including detailed procedures for submitting
proposals from multi-institution partnerships may be found in 10 CFR
part 605, and in the Application Guide for the Office of Science
Financial Assistance Program. Electronic access to the Guide and
required forms is made available via the World Wide Web at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html. The Project
Description must be 20 pages or less, including tables and figures, but
exclusive of attachments. The application must contain an abstract or
project summary, letters of intent from collaborators, and short vitae.
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number for this
program is 81.049, and the solicitation control number is ERFAP 10
CFR part 605.
Issued in Washington, D.C. on December 7, 2000.
John Rodney Clark,
Associate Director of Science for Resource Management.
[FR Doc. 00-32250 Filed 12-18-00; 8:45 am]
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