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NSCI @ NSF

NSCI Overview

The National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) is a whole-of-nation effort to accelerate scientific discovery and economic competitiveness by maximizing the benefits of high-performance computing (HPC) research, development, and deployment.

On July 29, 2015, the NSCI was established with NSF as one of three lead agencies together with the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. NSCI calls on NSF to play a leadership role in scientific discovery advances, the broader HPC ecosystem for scientific discovery, and workforce development. An NSCI Strategic Plan was made public in July 2016.

The NSCI aims to address five strategic objectives:

1. Accelerate delivery of a capable exascale computing system;
2. Increase coherence between technology for modeling/simulation and data analytics;
3. Establish a viable path forward in the "post-Moore's Law" era;
4. Increase the capacity and capability of an enduring national HPC ecosystem; and
5. Develop U.S. government, industry, and academic collaborations to share the benefits.

NSF is primarily focusing on objectives two through four, and will also contribute to basic research towards extreme-scale computing (objective one) and strengthening public-private collaborations through existing programs (objective five).

NSF Funding Opportunities

NSF addresses the NSCI through a number of existing funding opportunities, including core research programs. The list of NSF funding opportunities below is meant to be illustrative of the types of the programs that align with the NSCI.

Currently Accepting Proposals

• Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) - Data and Software: Elements and Frameworks
• Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining)
• National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program
• Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E)
• DCL: RAISE on Enabling Quantum Leap: Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems
• SBIR/STTR Program
• Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC)

Not Currently Accepting Proposals

• Towards a Leadership-Class Computing Facility - Phase 1
• Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2: SSE & SSI)
• NSF/Intel Partnership on Computer Assisted Programming for Heterogeneous Architectures (CAPA)
• Dear Colleague Letter: Innovative Computational Infrastructure for Understanding the Brain
• Energy-Efficient Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA)
• Joint NSF/NIH Initiative on Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Big Data (QuBBD)
• Scalable Parallelism in the Extreme (SPX)

Community Workshops

Community input is an integral part of addressing NSCI at NSF. Below are a number of workshops that relate to NSCI.

• Supercomputing (SC) 17, Birds of a Feather - "The Future of NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure" (Nov 2017)
• SC17, Birds of Feather - "National Strategic Computing Initiative Update" (Nov 2017).
• NSF CMP PI Workshop: The Quantum Revolution, (May 2017)
• 2017 NSF SI2 PI Workshop (February 2017)
• WHPCF 2016: Ninth Workshop on High Performance Computational Finance (November 2016)
• Architecture and Software for Emerging Applications (September 2016)
• Cyberpractitioner Workshop (July 2016)
• NSF Frontiers of Condensed Matter Physics: Principal Investigators Workshop on Topological Phases of Matter (May 2016)
• Big Data and Extreme-scale Computing (BDEC) (April 2013-June 2016)
• Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Data Science: Algorithmic, Mathematical, and Statistical (TFoDS) (April 2016)
• The White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop (October 2015)
• Workshop on Modeling & Simulation of Systems and Applications (August 2015)
• NSF Conference on Mathematical Sciences Challenges in Quantum Information (February 2015)
• BrainstormHPCD (High Performance Computing and Data) Workshops (January and February 2015)
• Workshop on High-Performance & Distributed Cyberinfrastructure for Polar Sciences: Applications, Requirements and Opportunities (December 2014)

Other Resources

• Joint Agency Assessment of the Responses to the RFI on Science Drivers Requiring Capable Exascale High Performance Computing
• Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support U.S. Science in 2017-2020 (The National Academies, 2016)
• NSF Assessment of Responses to the Request for Information (RFI) on Science Drivers Requiring Capable Exascale High Performance Computing
• 10 Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments
• The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program and NSCI

For more information about NSCI at NSF, please email: nsci@nsf.gov

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Last updated: 4.11.18