Track 1: ACCESS Resource Allocations Marketplace and Platform Services (RAMPS)

The Carnegie-Mellon University team provides allocation services as part of the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program. The Resource Allocations Marketplace and Platform Services (RAMPS) project is transforming the process of allocation for the ever-evolving range of NSF-funded resources in the ACCESS ecosystem.

This ecosystem includes many of the most powerful computing, storage, and related cyberinfrastructure resources available to the U.S. research community. These resources provide essential capabilities for advancing science and education across all fields of science. The RAMPS allocation environment offers a welcoming gateway that inspires collaboration and participation in the pursuit of scientific discovery while continuing to provide an essential gatekeeping function when necessary to balance demand for resources with the available supply.

The RAMPS marketplace is toppling many current allocations approaches by removing barriers between researchers and their needed resources, RAMPS creates an open, inviting, and democratized marketplace. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the allocations environment is a central focus of the project. RAMPS is working to ensure the full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underserved populations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

RAMPS provides an efficient, scalable and simplified interface for researchers, educators, and students to request resources in support of their research, educational, and workforce development endeavors. The RAMPS model of four allocation tiers, i.e., Explore, Discover, Ramp-Up, or Maximize, gives researchers with different needs multiple entry point options which optimize trade-offs between allocation application process efficiency, review effort, review turnaround times, and availability of resources.

For the resource providers in the ecosystem, RAMPS streamlines the process of integrating new systems and services. Built with an emphasis on modularity, extensibility, and decentralization, the RAMPS software platform is flexible enough to accommodate allocations for current and future computational and non-computational resources and services. ACCESS Credits, a universal allocation currency, and standardized allocation tiers allow RAMPS to accelerate allocation requests and reviews.

Finally, through a suite of Innovative Pilots, RAMPS is introducing disruptive features to the ecosystem and allocations marketplace to: inform current and future enhancements; decentralize the entry points for ACCESS allocations by building a set of campus and regional On-RAMPS; integrate cloud resources; define computational workflows as allocable resources; and enhance the allocations infrastructure to serve sensor nets and instrumentation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.