TITLE: Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI 2)
  DATE: 3/3/2010

   NSF 10-029
   Dear Colleague Letter: Software Infrastructure for Sustained
   Innovation (SI 2)

   March 3, 2010

   Dear Colleague:

   Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI^2)

   The Office of CyberInfrastucture (OCI) is partnering with Directorates
   and Offices across the Foundation to establish Software Infrastructure
   for Sustained Innovation (SI 2), a long-term program focused on
   realizing a sustained software infrastructure that is an integral part
   of NSF's Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and
   Engineering (CF21).1 
   vision. This program will catalyze and nurture the multidisciplinary
   processes required to support the entire software lifecycle, and
   result in the development of sustainable community software elements
   at all levels of the software stack and addressing all aspects of CI,
   from embedded sensor systems and instruments, to desktops and high-end
   data and computing systems. The goal is to create a software ecosystem
   that scales from individual or small groups of software innovators to
   large hubs of software excellence. 

   The overarching goal of the CF21 is to catalyze new thinking,
   paradigms and practices in science and engineering. CF21 fosters a
   pervasive, linked architecture for cyberinfrastructure that enables
   research at unprecedented scales, complexity, resolution, and accuracy
   by integrating computation, data and experiments in novel ways,
   nationally and internationally. CF21 has the potential for
   revolutionizing virtually every discipline by providing unique
   insights into complex problems, and thus represents unprecedented
   opportunities for understanding and managing natural and engineered
   systems.

   Software is a primary modality through which CF21 innovation and
   discovery will be realized. It permeates all aspects and layers of
   cyberinfrastructure (from application codes and frameworks,
   programming systems, libraries and system software, to middleware,
   operating systems, networking and the low-level drivers).

   The CF21 software infrastructure must address complexity,
   accommodating disruptive hardware trends, ever-increasing data
   volumes, complex application structures and behaviors, and emerging
   first-order concerns such as fault-tolerance and energy efficiency.
   The software must be continually refined, at one end to support these
   new trends and requirements, and at the other end to support new
   advances in the disciplines and their computational methodologies.
   There is also a new sense of urgency and opportunity for such an
   investment driven in part by the confluence of various stresses,
   including disruptive hardware trends, new technologies, new
   application formulations and community readiness.

   The SI 2 program will collectively support a vibrant ecosystem of
   partnerships between academia, government laboratories and industry
   for the development and stewardship of a software infrastructure that
   can sustain and accelerate innovation and productivity, nationally and
   internationally. The focus and scope of the program has been informed
   by the findings of a number of workshops and panels organized by
   multiple communities, most notably the various ongoing taskforces that
   are subcommittees of the NSF-wide Advisory Committee for
   Cyberinfrastructure (ACCI). It is anticipated that this program will
   begin with a program solicitation as early as FY 2010 and will ramp up
   in subsequent years.

   Questions or feedback related to this SI 2 initiative and upcoming
   program solicitation may be directed to Manish Parashar, OCI Program
   Director, by sending email to si2@nsf.gov.

   1 http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10015/nsf10015.jsp