Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability  (XPS)

CONTACTS

PROGRAM GUIDELINES

Solicitation  13-507

Important Notice to Proposers

A revised version of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG), NSF 13-1, was issued on October 4, 2012 and is effective for proposals submitted, or due, on or after January 14, 2013. Please be advised that, depending on the specified due date, the guidelines contained in NSF 13-1 may apply to proposals submitted in response to this funding opportunity.

Please be aware that significant changes have been made to the PAPPG to implement revised merit review criteria based on the National Science Board (NSB) report, National Science Foundation's Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions. While the two merit review criteria remain unchanged (Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts), guidance has been provided to clarify and improve the function of the criteria. Changes will affect the project summary and project description sections of proposals. Annual and final reports also will be affected.

A by-chapter summary of this and other significant changes is provided at the beginning of both the Grant Proposal Guide and the Award & Administration Guide.

SYNOPSIS

Computing systems have undergone a fundamental transformation from the single-processor devices of the turn of the century to today's ubiquitous and networked devices and warehouse-scale computing via the cloud. Parallelism has become ubiquitous at many levels. The proliferation of multi- and many-core processors, ever-increasing numbers of interconnected high performance and data intensive edge devices, and the data centers servicing them, is enabling a new set of global applications with large economic and social impact. At the same time, semiconductor technology is facing fundamental physical limits and single processor performance has plateaued.  This means that the ability to achieve predictable performance improvements through improved processor technologies has ended.

The Exploiting  Parallelism and Scalability (XPS) program aims to support groundbreaking research leading to a new era of parallel computing. XPS seeks research re-evaluating, and possibly re-designing, the traditional computer hardware and software stack for today's heterogeneous parallel and distributed systems and exploring new holistic approaches to parallelism and scalability.  Achieving the needed breakthroughs will require a collaborative effort among researchers representing all areas-- from the application layer down to the micro-architecture-- and will be built on new concepts and new foundational principles. New approaches to achieve scalable performance and usability need new abstract models and algorithms, programming models and languages, hardware architectures, compilers, operating systems and run-time systems, and exploit domain and application-specific knowledge. Research should also focus on energy- and communication-efficiency and on enabling the division of effort between edge devices and clouds. 

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Frequently Asked Questions (NSF 13-507)

THIS PROGRAM IS PART OF

Additional Funding Opportunities for the CCF Community

Additional Funding Opportunities for the CNS Community

Additional Funding Opportunities for the IIS Community

What Has Been Funded (Recent Awards Made Through This Program, with Abstracts)

Map of Recent Awards Made Through This Program