Title: NSF 06-035: Frequently Asked Questions about "Leadership-Class
        System Acquisition - Creating a Petascale Computing Environment for
        Science and Engineering (NSF 06-573)"
Date: 06/26/06




NSF 06-035: Frequently Asked Questions about "Leadership-Class
System Acquisition - Creating a Petascale Computing Environment for
Science and Engineering (NSF 06-573)"

This page provides clarification and pointers to additional material
that might be of interest to people and organizations considering
submitting a proposal in response to the solicitation named above.
The full text of the solicitation may be found at
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06573/nsf06573.html .

This page was last updated on June 15th, 2006.

  1. Will these FAQs be updated and how will I know if an update
     occurs?

     If we receive questions about the solicitation that may be
     of general interest, we may add the question and an
     appropriate answer to this list of FAQs. Unfortunately, we
     have no reliable mechanism for broadcasting an
     announcement that an update to the FAQs has occurred.
     Prospective PIs are encouraged to check this web address
     periodically.

  2. What are some additional sources of information that might be
     helpful to prospective proposing organizations?

     Prospective proposing organizations might find the
     following to be useful sources of background information:

     Information about usage of existing NSF-funded major HPC
     centers.
     http://www.sdsc.edu/user_services/allocations/past/ -
     LRAC, MRAC and NRAC allocations
     http://www.scd.ucar.edu/csl/alloc.2006.html - Resource
     allocations at NCAR’s Climate Simulation Lab.

     Information about NSF awards
     http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ - search for project
     abstract by investigator name, project title or award
     number.

     A number of research communities have articulated their
     future HPC science and engineering goals in workshop
     reports and similar documents. A number of these may be
     accessed from the OCI web page,
     http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=OCI.

  3. Proposing organizations are required to ensure open access for
     researchers; what does this mean?

     The awardee will be required to provide system access to
     personnel associated with projects that receive HPC
     allocations through the national Large Resource Allocation
     Committee. (See
     http://www.teragrid.org/userinfo/guide_access_accounts.html
     .) This is not intended to curtail the right of an awardee
     to restrict access for personnel who have misused their
     access privileges. Nor should it be interpreted as
     requiring an awardee to provide users with physical access
     to the HPC systems.

  4. Is it permissible to include, in a single proposal, options for
     a particular architecture deployed at two or more different
     scales at correspondingly different costs? E.g. Option 1:
     system X for $YM; Option 2: 2 times System X for $ZM.

     No. Each proposal should be for the acquisition and
     deployment of a single, petascale, HPC system.