Today the Energy Department’s Advanced Manufacturing Office announced up to $3 million in available funding for manufacturers to use high-performance computing resources at the Department’s national laboratories to tackle major manufacturing challenges. The High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program enables innovation in U.S. manufacturing through the adoption of high performance computing (HPC) to advance applied science and technology in manufacturing, with an aim of increasing energy efficiency, advancing clean energy technology, and reducing energy’s impact on the environment.
HPC is showing potential in addressing a range of manufacturing and applied energy challenges of national importance to the U.S. Past HPC4Mfg solicitations have highlighted energy intensive manufacturing sectors. But this time the focus has expanded to include challenges identified in the Energy Departments’ 2015 Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR), with a special focus on advances in HPC as a platform of enabling information technology for innovation and manufacturing. In doing so, we seek to grow the HPC Manufacturing community, by enticing HPC expertise to the field, adding to a high tech workforce, which will enable them to make a real impact on clean energy technology and the environment.
“We are entering a renewed era in manufacturing for the U.S.,” said Mark Johnson, director of the Advanced Manufacturing Office for the Department of Energy. “Across the board we are seeing the opportunity for productivity improvements when our most advanced capabilities are applied to challenges of energy in manufacturing.”
The Energy Department plans to select 8-10 projects for this third round of funding and seeks qualified industry partners to participate in a one-year term collaborative project. Selected projects will receive up to $300,000 to support access to supercomputers and experts at the partnering national labs. Applications are due by October 14, 2016.
In this video from the 2016 HPC User Forum in Austin, Wayne O Miller from LLNL announces a new RFP for the HPC4mfg program.
Led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory as strong partners, the HPC4Mfg program has a diverse portfolio of small and large companies, consortiums, and institutes within varying industry sectors that span across the country. It currently supports 29 projects that range from improved turbine blades for aircraft engines and reduced heat loss in electronics to steel-mill energy efficiency and improved fiberglass production. These projects, brought forward by 23 industry partners, total more than $11 million in total funding.
This effort also advances the Obama Administration’s National Strategic Computing Initiative, unveiled in July 2015, which calls for public-private partnerships to increase industrial adoption of high-performance computing.
The Advanced Manufacturing Office within the Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy supports this program. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program within DOE’s Office of Science supports the program with HPC cycles through its Leadership Computing Challenge allocation program.
As the HPC4Mfg program continues, it is anticipated that there will be two rounds of proposals sought each year, one in the spring and the other in the fall.
