Call for R&D Project Proposals under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)
Submissions Closed on November 18, 2020 at 24:00 hours IST.
Objectives
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITy) has been implementing the National Supercomputing Mission project with the aim of ensuring country’s leadership in supercomputing. In order to harness the vast supercomputing computing resources provided under NSM, to develop applications to tackle a broad spectrum nationally relevant and internationally competitive problems of unprecedented complexity working at peta and exascale and also to take the nation to the exascale era, it has been decided to initiate R &D projects across the country.This is the call for proposal on “HPC Applications Development” and “R&D leading to Exascale computing”.
The focus would be on but not limited:
to build capabilities to tackle problems that are currently out of reach either for want of newer physics or newer algorithms
to focus on the use of machine learning and large scale data analytics at exascale level
to develop new programming models that scale well at exascale architectures
to develop popular application packages at peta and exscale level
to build newer class of processor architecture and interconnects.
The R&D activities/project proposals that are sought through this call would be broadly in the areas of
HPC Applications
Scalable Algorithms and Libraries
HPC System Software and Data Management
Hardware System Architecture
Enabling Technologies
Data Centre Infrastructure
Cross-cutting issues spanning across the above.
The detailed description and the proposal format are given at the end of this advertisement
The research grant is provided for Salaries, Travel support, Consumables and other costs and Supercomputer usage charges. The charges are mentioned in the proposal format link below.
Note: No assets including computational hardware or software can be created under this project.
The project support is for a maximum of two years.
The call for applications will be notified through the websites of DST, MeITY, CDAC, IISc and JNCASR. Other host Institutions will also be requested to notify.
The proposal in pdf format must be sent to proposals.nsm@iisc.ac.in. Clearly mark in the subject line as “Applications Development” or “R&D Exascale” depending on the project category.
The selection will be based on the recommendations of Expert committees. The committees will evaluate a proposal based on the technical merit, the capability of the PI and primarily on the potential of the project to lead to the advancement of HPC (High Performance Computing) R&D, large-scale HPC-based applications, especially scalable applications for exascale systems and aimed at solving major science and engineering problems, development of HPC-based application packages, or novel processor architectures and interconnects, large-scale machine learning and data analytic approaches and novel programming models for HPC.
2. Does the project require a co-PI? Can a postdoctoral fellow could be a co-PI?
True to DST norms, a project requires a co-PI and only a permanent employee of the Institute can be a co-PI.
3. Is there any upper limit on the Travel and Consumables budget like SERB proposals? Is there any upper limit on the overall budget for a project?
The limits will be decided by the committee based on the merit of the proposal.
4. Manpower is specified as (JRF, SRF, RA) under Salaries? Can other categories like PostDocs be considered?
RA-I, RA-II etc. are PostDoc positions whose salaries are governed by the DST emolument scheme. DST Emolument Scheme – July 2020
5. Can a single faculty be involved in multiple projects, either as PI or co-PI?
No. A faculty can participate as PI or co-PI in only one project in only one of the areas – 1. R&D for Exascale 2. HPC Applications.
6. Can an Indian PI working in India have an Indian researcher working abroad as a Research Fellow as Co-PI?
The Co-PI from abroad will not be getting any grants from India. An undertaking to this effect signed by both the PI and Co-PI will have to be submitted along with the proposal.
7. Can an INSPIRE faculty whose tenure is sufficient for the project duration be a co-PI?
Yes. This follows the DST SERB norms where INSPIRE faculty, Ramanujan and Ramalingaswamy Fellows are also eligible to apply provided they have adequate duration of tenure greater than the project duration at the time of submission of application.
