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NSF/VMware Partnership on Edge Computing Data Infrastructure (ECDI)

Status: Archived

Archived funding opportunity

This document has been archived.

Important information about NSF’s implementation of the revised 2 CFR

NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website. These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Important information for proposers

All proposals must be submitted in accordance with the requirements specified in this funding opportunity and in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. It is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets these requirements. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Synopsis

The proliferation of mobile and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, and their pervasiveness across nearly every sphere of our society, continues to raise questions about the architectures that organize tomorrow’s compute infrastructure. At the heart of this trend is the data that will be generated as myriad devices and application services operate simultaneously to digitize a complex domain like a smart building or smart industrial facility. A key shift is from edge devices consuming data produced in the cloud to edge devices being a voluminous producer of data. This shift reopens a broad variety of system-level research questions concerning data placement, movement, processing and sharing. Importantly, the shift also opens the door to compelling new applications with significant industrial and societal impact in domains such as healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, public safety, energy, buildings, and telecommunications.

Edge computing is broadly defined as a networked systems architectural approach in which compute and storage resources are placed at the network edge, in proximity to the mobile and IoT devices. The approach offers advantages, such as improved scalability as local computation reduces the volume of data transported, reduced network latency and faster compute response times as data is processed on local compute nodes, and arguably improved security and privacy where data requirements preclude access and exchanges beyond the edge. Edge computing infrastructure may consist of IoT gateways, telephone central offices, cloudlets, micro data centers, or any number of schemes that support the provisioning of communication, compute and storage resources near edge devices.

This solicitation seeks to advance the state of the art in end-to-end networked systems architecture that includes edge infrastructures. The central challenge is to design and develop data-centric edge architectures, programming paradigms, runtime environments, and data sharing frameworks that will enable compelling new applications and fully realize the opportunity of big data in tomorrow’s mobile and IoT device environments. Researchers are expected to carefully consider the implications of edge computing’s multi-stakeholder context, and the need for security and privacy as first order design and operational considerations.

Program contacts

Darleen L. Fisher
Program Director, CISE/CNS
dlfisher@nsf.gov (703) 292-8950
Jack Brassil
Program Director, CISE/CNS
jbrassil@nsf.gov (703) 292-8950
Samee Khan
Program Director, CISE/CNS
skhan@nsf.gov (703) 292-8061
Mimi McClure
Program Director, CISE/CNS
mmcclure@nsf.gov (703) 292-5197 CISE/CNS
J. Christopher Ramming
VMware
chrisramming@vmware.com (650) 427-5000
David Ott
VMware
dott@vmware.com (650) 427-5816
Sujata Banerjee
VMware
sujatab@vmware.com (650) 427-1066

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