DARPA announces Omnipresent HPC program

Darpa logoOn June 21 DARPA released its latest high end computing BAA, the Omnipresent High Performance Computing program. According to the BAA, this call is designed to build hardware that will be needed by the systems activities undertaken as part of DARPA’s UHPC program.

From related coverage of the announcement

Topics of interest in the OHPC program include software that not only reduces requirements for high performance computing, including memory and storage, but also that enables programmability to reduce the need for users to understand complex system aspects like heterogeneous cores and memory hierarchy; hardware and software for managing component failure rate, as well as shared information and responsibility among the operating system, runtime system, and applications; scalable I/O systems that may include alternatives to file systems; self-aware system software; programming models that allow developers to express their execution goals for achieving security, dependability, power efficiency and performance; and low-power circuits that can be used across multiple UHPC or extreme scale system designs.

Responses are due on Aug 6. There will be a single, three year phase to the effort, and DARPA expects to fund several efforts at no more than a million dollars per year per effort.

I’m mobile right now, but I’ll dig into the BAA tonight and expand coverage if I find anything cool.