NSF and SRC Proposal: Energy-Efficient Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA)

If you are interested in submitting an Energy-Efficient Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA) proposal, submit the proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) by Monday, March 28, 2016.

  • Full Proposal Deadline Date:  Monday, March 28, 2016

Synopsis of Program:

There is a consensus across the many industries touched by our ubiquitous computing infrastructure that future performance improvements across the board are now severely limited by the amount of energy it takes to manipulate, store, and critically, transport data. While the limits and tradeoffs for this performance-energy crisis vary across the full range of application platforms, they have all reached a point at which evolutionary approaches to addressing this challenge are no longer adequate.

Truly disruptive breakthroughs are now required, and not just from any one segment of the technology stack. Rather, due to the complexity of the challenges, revolutionary new approaches are needed at each level in the hierarchy. Furthermore, simultaneous co-optimization across all levels is essential for the creation of new, sustainable computing platforms.

These simultaneous technical and organizational challenges have never been as complex or as critically important as they are now. The urgency of solving the multi-disciplinary technical challenges will require new methods of collaboration and organization among researchers.

Therefore, a comprehensive and collaborative approach must be undertaken to maximize the potential for successfully identifying and implementing revolutionary solutions to break through the bottleneck of energy-constrained computational performance. Programmers, system architects, circuit designers, chip processing engineers, material scientists, and computational chemists must all explore these new paths together to co-design an optimal solution path.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) recognize this need, and agree to embark on a new collaborative research program to support compelling research that is of paramount importance to industry, academia and society at large. This partnership will specifically support new research to minimize the energy impacts of processing, storing, and moving data within future computing systems, and will be synergistic with other research activities that address other aspects of this overarching energy-constrained computing performance challenge.

The jointly supported research effort aligns with interagency initiatives and priorities, including the National Strategic Computing Initiative and the Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing.

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Per Illinois Tech policy, all grant applications (federal and non-federal) must be reviewed, signed and submitted by the Office of Sponsored Research and Programs regardless of the amount of the request. Complete your routing sheet as soon as possible here. Contact osrp@iit.edu or call at 312.567.3035 for more information on submitting a proposal.