Collaborative Research: Conceptualizing an Institute for Using Inter-Domain Abstractions to Support Inter-Disciplinary Applications

这笔赠款是一笔规划赠款，用于资助持续创新的软件基础设施研究所的概念化。它为技术和组织方面的规划提供资金。为了了解社区的需求，它包括研讨会和外展，以收集社区的需求。要完全理解复杂物理现象(如着火的建筑物)的行为，通常既要了解大尺度效应，如每层楼的热量积累，又要了解小尺度效应，如基础中的钢梁如何随着温度的升高而变形。同时研究这类效应的计算模拟被称为“多尺度”模拟，编写起来极其困难。这是因为代表不同比例尺的计算模型差异很大，用于模拟每个比例尺的软件组件往往不兼容。组合这些完全不同的组件需要程序员付出艰苦且容易出错的劳动。这个项目将构思一个致力于为研究多尺度问题的科学家提供解决方案的研究所。该项目的中心是联系计算科学家和计算机系统研究人员，以确定哪些类型的编程抽象可能对不同的计算模型有用，以及如何最好地使现有的抽象适应多尺度模拟的挑战。目标是建立一个研究所，研究各种编程抽象的使用，以弥合不同软件组件之间的差距，从而减轻编写多尺度模拟的痛苦。最终的效果将是允许准确和有效地模拟多尺度系统，提供对复杂物理系统行为的更深层次的洞察。

This grant is a planning grant to fund the conceptualization of an institute for software infrastructure for sustained innovation. It funds the planning of the technical and organizational aspects. To understand community requirements, it involves workshops and outreach to gather community requirements. To fully understand the behavior of a complex physical phenomenon such as a burning building, it is often necessary to understand both large-scale effects such as the buildup of heat on each floor, and small-scale effects, such as how a steal beam in the foundation deforms as it gets hotter. Computational simulations that study such effects in tandem are called "multi-scale" simulations, and are exceedingly difficult to write. This is because the computational models that represent the different scales differ widely, and the software components used to simulate each scale are often incompatible. Combining these disparate components requires painstaking and error prone programmer labor. This project will conceptualize an institute devoted to providing solutions to scientists investigating multi-scale problems. The project centers around reaching out to computational scientists and computer systems researchers to determine both what kinds of programming abstractions may be useful for different computational models and how to best adapt existing abstractions to the challenges of multi-scale simulation. The goal is to enable the establishment of an institute that will study the use of various programming abstractions to bridge the gap between differing software components, hence easing the pain of writing multi-scale simulations. The ultimate effect will be to allow multi-scale systems to be simulated accurately and efficiently, providing deeper insights into the behavior of complex physical systems.