Peter Harsha over at the excellent Policy Blog of the CRA updates us today on how thought — and its handmaiden, science — are doing in the most recent budget.
NSF, which under the House and Senate appropriations plans approved earlier in the year would have received either a 10 or 11 percent increase (respectively) over FY 07, will instead receive just 2.5 percent vs. FY 07 in the new omnibus. NSF’s R&RA account (which funds the research directorates) will see just a 3.3 percent increase over FY 07 (instead of a planned 10.5 percent increase), should the omnibus pass.
NIST’s research efforts, which had been slated to grow over 15 percent vs. FY 07 in the House and Senate bills, will instead see that planned increase drop to just 1.4 percent over FY 07, should the bill pass.
DOE Office of Science is up 6.8% (but down from earlier draft bills that would have put in an 18% increase). Advanced Scientific Computing Research grows b 25% over FY07.
Good-ish news for HPC though; we’re getting a new effort aimed at exascale computing:
The Office of Science and the [NNSA] are directed to establish the Institute for Advanced Architectures and Algorithms with Centers of Excellence at Sandia National Labs and [ORNL]. These Centers will execute a national program involving industry, universities and national laboratories that is focused on technologies to sustain the U.S. leadership in high performance computing. The NNSA ASC and Office of Science ASCR programs will jointly fund the program and provide direction needed to support the goal of developing exascale computing for the Nation.
I know we have lots of readers in the DOE labs…if any of you have info on this new venture, send us an email or leave a comment.
UPDATE: Also read the following article for DoE-centric funding issues:
http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/dec/17/budget-restores-funds-sandia-los-alamos-labs/