Friends,
Well, it seems the ESC review did not go well and the plan will not be funded. Rick got a call yesterday evening from Dan Hitchcock, who explained the reviews were not positive enough to move forward. A new joint ASCR/NNSA call for proposals would probably need to be issued to address exascale software.
I'd like to thank everyone for their fantastic help over the last year building such strong collaborations between all the partners. I think we can be very proud of the ESC team and the plan we put together.
While this is a setback for creating a new R&D community to focus on HPC open source software, I'm glad we proposed something daring, bold, and exciting. We pushed the limits --- proposing a new partnership between ASCR and NNSA, an improved model for identifying and attacking hard research problems and delivering them quickly on cutting-edge hardware, and a new plan for working with vendors to co-design architectures. Never before had such a clear and cohesive community plan for improving HPC software been built. However disappointing, I feel we did the right thing and the current plan is a tremendous achievement. Science is best when the outcome is unknown, the path perilous, the work gooey, and the team amiable and goodnatured.
Thanks again for everyone's amazing and excellent work. Together we built an A+ team and audacious plan. It may be several weeks before we get official news and substantive feedback from the program office. However, as you hear informal news from reviewers, please share.
-Pete
