Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant opportunity titled Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS) was created to push the research community toward a new generation of computing systems built around parallel and distributed execution rather than continued reliance on faster single processors. The opportunity is motivated by a major shift in how computing is delivered and used: instead of primarily single-processor machines, modern computing now spans multicore and manycore processors, large fleets of networked and data-rich edge devices, and massive cloud data centers that support them. At the same time, semiconductor scaling and traditional single-thread performance gains have slowed dramatically due to physical and practical limits, meaning the historical expectation of predictable performance improvements from new processor generations is no longer realistic. XPS frames parallelism not as a niche technique for supercomputers, but as the default operating condition for everything from phones and sensors to warehouse-scale cloud platforms.

The program seeks bold, foundational research that rethinks, and where necessary redesigns, the conventional hardware-software stack to better match the realities of heterogeneous parallel and distributed systems. Rather than focusing on isolated optimizations in one layer, XPS emphasizes holistic approaches that coordinate ideas across the full stack, from applications and algorithms down through programming models, languages, compilers, operating systems, runtime systems, and ultimately hardware and microarchitecture. The goal is to unlock scalable performance that is not only high, but also predictable and usable in practice, recognizing that usability and programmability are central barriers to widespread, correct, and efficient parallel computing.

XPS encourages work on new abstractions and models that help developers reason about parallelism and scalability, as well as new algorithms and system designs that can take advantage of many concurrent resources without collapsing under synchronization costs, communication overheads, or complexity. It explicitly highlights the importance of domain- and application-specific knowledge, suggesting that breakthroughs may come from tailoring parallel execution strategies to the structure of real workloads. In addition, the solicitation calls attention to energy efficiency and communication efficiency as first-class concerns, reflecting the reality that performance is often limited by power budgets and data movement rather than raw arithmetic throughput. Another key theme is better division of labor between edge devices and cloud resources, acknowledging that modern applications often span both environments and need coordinated execution strategies to meet latency, bandwidth, privacy, and energy constraints.

From an administrative standpoint, this was a discretionary NSF grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 13-507) in the science and technology research and development category. NSF anticipated making about 20 awards, with an estimated total funding level of $15,000,000. Individual awards ranged up to a ceiling of $750,000, with no required cost sharing or matching. The opportunity was associated with CFDA numbers 47.070 (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) and 47.080 (Office of Cyberinfrastructure). A notable eligibility requirement was that each proposal had to include two or more principal investigators with different and distinct expertise aligned to the program focus areas, reinforcing the program’s emphasis on cross-layer, collaborative research. The solicitation was posted on November 5, 2012, with a full proposal deadline of February 20, 2013, and it was archived on March 20, 2013. The sponsoring agency was the National Science Foundation, and further details were provided in NSF Publication 13-507.

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