FireSeed Streaming Supercomputer Update

The FireSeed Streaming Supercomputer (FS3) team is getting close to having its first project grant proposal completed.

With a bit of luck and perseverance, by mid-August the grant proposal will be ready to submit to several grant organizations. Now that the AGW grant process is nearly completed, other grant opportunities will be investigated. One option is various NSF (National Science Foundation) grants. Another avenue is SBIR grants (Small Business Innovation Research). A third program to find out more about is DURIP (Defense University Research Instrumentation Program).

NSF grants -- I'm working to set up one or more meetings in August with people familiar with or connected with various NSF grants that might be appropriate for the FS3 project.

SBIR grants -- An email will go out shortly to Pat Dillon of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Network, an SBIR specialist, to see if she'd be willing to meet and provide some guidance on applying for (and winning...) an SBIR grant for FS3.

DURIP grant applications are due 21 August 2007, so the FS3 team needs to start pulling that application together pretty quickly. The preceding link goes to the Office of Naval Research; here's a link to the Army DURIP application and here's a link to the Air Force DURIP program. As can be seen from the Air Force Research Areas Overview Awards webpage, the DURIP program is but one of many Air Force research programs. This page and others related to government grants highlight the value a 'grant specialist' would bring to the FS3 project. DURIP awards during FY 2006 averaged $217,000 and ranged from $51,000 to $1,000,000. An 'average' DURIP grant would be a nice way to kick the FS3 project into really high gear. The DURIP FY 2007 awards (<-- link is to a pdf file) that involved computer clusters were:

1. High-Performance Computer Cluster
2. Computer System for First-Principles Simulations of Molecular Solids
3. Computer Cluster for Ab Initio Simulations of Piezoelectric Materials
4. High-Performance Computational Cluster for Energetic Materials Research
5. Terascale Cluster for Turbulent Combustion Simulation
6. Computational Cluster for Multiscale Simulations of Ionic Liquids

Between the above grant opportunities and any others we connect with in the next four months, we'll either end up with a few dollars to build an FS3 alpha or beta system or at least learn lots about the process of chasing grants in America.

In addition to grant work, the FS3 team is having email discussions regarding university collaboration on the FS3 project. University participation will be helpful in many ways.

1. Providing a good connection point with computer science students or students who need to use supercomputing power in their discipline.
2. Providing connections with professors interested in GPU-cluster supercomputers (applications needing supercomputers, hardware specialists, software specialists).
   
3. Provide a co-sponsor for FS3 meetings and roadshows.
   
4. Provide university connections for grants requiring that qualification.

The FS3 team is also putting renewed effort into developing a high-quality website which can be the public interface for the FS3 project, a site to which we can point those people interested in learning what FS3 is generally about.

This project has been dormant for a couple months due to busy schedules on the part of core team members, but an updated action plan is being developed to get the project back into high gear.

To learn more, contact me at bwaldron (attt] gmail {dottt} com. Hope to hear from you soon!

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