The Office of Science (SC) Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) has spent decades on, and invested millions of dollars in, the development of HPC software that operates efficiently on large, heterogeneous supercomputers. Today, this hardware (e.g., CPUs, GPUs, TPUs, ASICs) has permeated society at large, finding its way into everything from smart phones to cloud computers. However, many of the software packages and libraries that can take advantage of this heterogeneity have remained solely within the HPC ecosystem. Work proposed under this topic must critically depend on one or more ASCR-funded software packages. Applications should include a reference (webpage or other citation) to show that the relevant software has been supported by ASCR. Relevant ASCR-funded software packages include, but are not limited to: Mathematical Libraries: SuperLU (https://portal.nersc.gov/project/sparse/superlu/), STRUMPACK (https://portal.nersc.gov/project/sparse/strumpack/), HYPRE (https://www.llnl.gov/casc/hypre/), Trilinos (https://trilinos.github.io/), PETSc (https://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/), SUNDIALS (https://computing.llnl.gov/projects/sundials), MFEM (https://mfem.org/). Programming Models: Kokkos (https://github.com/kokkos/kokkos), RAJA (https://github.com/LLNL/RAJA), Umpire (https://github.com/LLNL/umpire), Legion (https://legion.stanford.edu/) I/O: ADIOS2 (https://github.com/ornladios/ADIOS2), Parallel NetCDF (https://parallelnetcdf.github.io/), HDF5 (https://www.hdfgroup.org/) Compilers and Runtimes: LLVM (https://llvm.org/), Argobots (https://www.argobots.org/) MPI: OpenMPI (https://www.open-mpi.org/), MPICH (https://www.mpich.org/) Package Management: Spack (https://spack.io/) Software Stacks and SDKs: E4S (https://e4s-project.github.io/), xSDK (https://xsdk.info/). o Please note that E4S and xSDK include many ASCR-funded software packages that are not separately listed in this document. See the references for an additional, partial listing of available software packages and examples of their uses. Applications without a critical dependence on one or more ASCR-funded software packages are out of scope. ASCR understands that a diverse community of stakeholders contributing to the maintenance and evolution of a software package lowers the long-term risks associated with commercialization of that software. Accordingly, ASCR encourages contributing fixes for defects in the ASCR-funded software, changes needed to make the ASCR-funded software function on generally-available platforms, and other non-proprietary enhancements of general utility to the ASCR-funded software back to the project in a manner consistent with any applicable licensing requirements and other project policies. While not required, applicants are encouraged to provide letters of support from at least one developer of each ASCR-funded software package that plays a significant role in the proposed work. This letter should outline the mutually-understood procedure via which any relevant contributions will be reviewed for acceptance into the project and briefly outline any anticipated prerequisites to initiating that procedure (e.g., the future execution of a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)). ASCR will consider collaborative applications from teams of small businesses under this topic, with up to three small businesses forming a team. Each institution in such a team must be a small business. Each institution may include one or more academic or lab partners as subcontractors. Each institution must submit an application that contains an identical narrative section and a common statement describing how any Intellectual Property (IP) issues will be addressed by the collaboration. Each application must have an institution-specific budget and budget-justification forms, biographical data for the PI and senior personnel involved in the project, and a commercialization plan. The budget proposed for each participating business must separately comply with the ceiling, floor, and other requirements in the Funding Opportunity Announcement. The cover sheet for each submission must clearly show all institutions involved in the collaboration. a. Deployment of ASCR-Funded Software Accelerating the deployment and use of advanced, ASCR-funded software technologies, packages, and libraries can significantly improve the performance, reliability, and stability of commercial applications while lowering the cost of developing new capabilities. While many ASCR-supported software packages are open source, they are often complicated to use, distributed primarily in source-code form targeting common HPC systems, and potential adopters lack options for purchasing commercial support, training, and customdevelopment services. The expertise required to install and use these software packages poses a significant barrier to many organizations due to the levels of complexity built into them to facilitate scientific discovery and research. Moreover, without a commercial interest in broadly marketing the capabilities of the software, possibly including in markets beyond HPC, adoption is limited by a lack of exposure within the wider technology ecosystem. Providing simpler interfaces targeted for specific markets, or offering a spectrum of commercial services around the underlying open-source software, would make these software packages more usable for commercial, industrial, and non-scientific applications. Grant applications are sought to take one or more ASCR-funded software packages and make them easier to use by a wide variety of industries or in commercial venues by developing commercial offerings based on those ASCR-funded software packages. This may include design, implementation, and usability testing of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), web interfaces, or interfaces for alternative programming languages (e.g., using Python, R, or Julia); porting to other platforms (e.g., cloud, mobile); simplification of user input; decreasing complexity of the code by stripping out components not required; hardening the code to make it more robust; adding new capabilities; adding user-support tools or services; or other ways that make the code more widely useable to industrial applications. Questions Contact: Hal Finkel, Hal.Finkel@science.doe.gov and/or William Spotz, William.Spotz@science.doe.gov b. Integration of ASCR-Funded Libraries Adopting and integrating advanced, ASCR-funded libraries into commercial products can lower the cost of developing new capabilities while simultaneously providing improved performance, reliability, and stability. The advanced mathematical and computational algorithms, and support for state-of-the-art hardware, can be leveraged by commercial software internally, thereby providing important capabilities without users interacting directly with the capabilities provided by the underlying ASCR-funded libraries. These commercial applications need not be targeted at HPC systems, but rather, may integrate and adapt the relevant ASCRfunded libraries for use in cloud, mobile, or other computing environments. Grant applications are sought to take one or more ASCR-funded libraries and integrate them into new or existing, commercially-supported software products to provide unique, transformative capabilities. Applicants may choose to strip out code components, harden them, or perform any other tasks necessary to meet deployment requirements in the context of the envisioned commercial product. Questions Contact: Hal Finkel, Hal.Finkel@science.doe.gov and/or William Spotz, William.Spotz@science.doe.gov c. Other In addition to the specific subtopic listed above, the Department invites grant applications in other areas that fall within the scope of the topic description above.
