Advanced Computing Systems & Services: Adapting to the Rapid Evolution of Science and Engineering Research 2.0

The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations who are willing to serve as resource providers within the NSF Advanced Computing Systems and Services (ACSS) program. Resource providers would (1) provide advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources in production operations to support the full range of computation, data-analysis, and AI research across all of science and engineering (S&E), and (2) enable democratized and equitable access to the proposed resources. The current solicitation is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by provisioning resources, broadly defined in this solicitation to include systems and services, in two categories: 

• Category I, Capacity Resources: production computational resources maximizing the capacity provided to support the broad range of computation, data analytics and AI 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.

Resource Providers supported via this solicitation will be incorporated into NSF’s ACSS 2.0 program portfolio. This program complements investments in leadership-class computing and funds a federation of nationally available advanced computing resources that are technically diverse and intended to enable discoveries at a computational scale beyond the research of individual or regional academic institutions.  

NSF anticipates that at least 90% of the provisioned resource will be available to the S&E community through an open peer-reviewed national allocation process and have resource users be supported by community and other support services. Such allocation and support services are expected to be coordinated through the NSF-funded Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) , the National AI Research Resource, or an NSF-approved alternative as may emerge. 

Provisioning novel, diverse computational resources nationally at scale will require capability and capacity to support researchers who need assistance to use these resources. User support may be provided via various means, e.g., training sessions, documentation, direct engagement in response to tickets created via the ACCESS program, or integration of novel, NSF-funded software tools.     

The ACSS 2.0 Program seeks broad representation of PIs across the full spectrum of diverse community talent (including the participation of groups that have traditional been underrepresented in the cyberinfrastructure community) and institutions (including those that have not historically provided nationally allocatable cyberinfrastructure) in both the community of resource recipients and resources users to continue growing the scale and diversity of the S&E community. Submission from or partnership with EPSCoR institutions and institutions that have not previously received ACSS awards is encouraged.