Software and Hardware Foundations  (SHF)

CONTACTS

See program guidelines for contact information.

SYNOPSIS

Virtually all fields of science and engineering - and society at large - depend on fundamental advances in scientific foundations and engineering methods for the hardware and software that comprise computing systems. Progress toward achieving robust, reliable computing in traditional and non-traditional system environments is enabled by breakthroughs in electronic design and design tools, hardware and hardware architectures for a broad spectrum of computer systems, algorithms and software for utilizing them effectively, and methods and tools for designing and programming applications that are efficiently producible, verifiably correct and adaptable to changing requirements and environments.

The SHF program solicits proposals that advance the design, verification, operation, utilization, understanding and evaluation of the hardware and software that make up computers and computer-based systems. Such advances may proffer principles, formalisms, models, methods, languages, logics, novel software and/or hardware artifacts, algorithms to create new or enhanced functionality, and formal methods and tools for the design and implementation of computer systems and their applications.  Proposals should emphasize lasting principles, robust theories, high-leverage tools and novel approaches.  Proposals should include plans for validation through proofs of concept, empirical evaluation, and/or other scientific methods. They may also address issues of usability and scale.

The SHF program supports all aspects of the science and engineering of software.  We welcome research projects in software enginerring emphasizing verifiability, certifiability, usability, safety, privacy, interoperability, etc. with an emphasis on formal methods and usable tools.  SHF supports the entire range of programming language and compiler research from principles and semantics to compiling for multi-threaded and multi-core architectures. High-performance computing research may produce new programming languages, models, better I/O, storage, organization, and indexing capabilities for data,  SHF also supports research on models of computation and architectures that exploit biological processes and biological and nano materials.

The SHF program welcomes hardware-focused projects on design automation for micro and nano systems address design methodologies for VLSI to respond to rapid miniaturization resulting in millions to a few billion transistors on a chip. Projects on computer systems architecture research may address aspects of uniprocessor, multiprocessor/multi-core/CMP and system-on-chip (SoC) architectures with emphasis on topics such as characterization of workloads, processor microarchitectures, memory systems, I/O systems, interconnects, and hardware-software co-design to facilitate programmability, real-time computation, power and thermal management, fault-tolerance, and dynamic adaptation for quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning.

SHF especially welcomes research that cuts across these areas. For example, numerous challenges must be addressed to harness the full computing power of multi-core architectures.  The SHF program supports projects whose research outcomes promise advances in parallel programming models, abstractions, languages and algorithms; software development, compilation, debugging, visualization tools, and platforms and testbeds for parallel architectures and scientific computing,  frameworks for automatic parallelization, optimized code generation and dynamic run-time execution, scalable mechanisms for concurrency control and synchronization in heterogeneous environments, virtualization for optimized performance, and power-aware scheduling and load balancing algorithms.

Another crosscutting theme is the development and use of new formalisms and logics for reasoning about properties of software and hardware systems. Included here is research on techniques such as model checking and theorem proving to enhance the applicability, usability, and efficiency of such techniques.

Proposals in the topical areas described above are in scope for the SHF program, but in addition, the SHF cluster encourages proposals that transcend traditional areas, import ideas from other fields, or capture the dynamic interactions between the architecture, language, compiler, systems software, and applications layers.

More information on topics of interest within the Software and Hardware Foundations program is available at:   http://www.nsf.gov/cise/ccf/shf_pgm09.jsp

Software and Hardware Foundations (SHF) Staff

Funding Opportunities for the Software and Hardware Foundations Program:

Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs.  NSF 09-555

THIS PROGRAM IS PART OF

Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs