DOE seeks input to help develop stewardship program for software ecosystem

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) is seeking feedback from federal labs and other stakeholders to help develop a stewardship program for the software ecosystem that supports scientific and high-performance computing (HPC). Comments are due December 13.

According to a Request for Information published in the October 29 Federal Register, ASCR plans to build a shared software stewardship program to leverage and build on the existing Exascale Computing Project (ECP) ecosystem model to develop, curate, harden, and distribute software essential for effective use of HPC systems. This process will involve collaboration with other DOE offices and select outside entities to support development of key applications, especially those which continue to defy attempts to address them at the exascale level of computing performance and problems involving edge computing.

ASCR is particularly interested in responses from researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, including individuals from groups historically underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) or from underserved communities; incubators and accelerators; investors and funders; businesses of all sizes; institutions of higher education; DOE National Laboratories and other agencies’ federally-funded research and development centers (FFRDCs); other federal agencies; non-profit organizations, professional societies, and R&D consortia; and state, local, and tribal governments.

ASCR is specifically interested in receiving input pertaining to:

(1) Software dependencies and requirements for scientific application development and/or research in computer science and applied mathematics relevant to DOE’s mission priorities

(2) Practices related to the security and integrity of software and data

(3) Infrastructure requirements for software development for scientific and high-performance computing

(4) Developing and maintaining community software

(5) Challenges in building a diverse workforce and maintaining an inclusive professional environment

(6) Requirements, barriers, and challenges to technology transfer, and building communities around software projects, including forming consortia and other non-profit organizations

(7) Overall scope of the stewardship effort

(8) Management and oversight structure of the stewardship effort

(9) Assessment and criteria for success for the stewardship effort

Read more: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-10-29/pdf/2021-23582.pdf