FEMU receives an NSF POSE award to build its open-source ecosystem
FEMU has received a Phase I award from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program: Award No. 2550145, Toward a Community-Driven Fast Emulator (FEMU) Ecosystem for Next-Generation Storage Systems Research and Innovation, running from June 1, 2026 to May 31, 2027.
POSE does not fund new emulator features. It funds the work that turns a widely used research tool into a project its users can sustain together. The award has three objectives:
- Ecosystem discovery and community engagement. Learn who uses FEMU, for what, and what keeps people from contributing. We are interviewing users in universities and industry this fall.
- Contributor infrastructure and training. Onboarding paths, continuous integration and testing, and teaching material. The FEMU Manual and its nine tutorials are the first results.
- Governance and security. A transparent governance charter and security policies. The proposed charter is open for comment, and the security policy is in the repository.
Where we start
We will report progress against these numbers, taken from GitHub on October 2, 2026:
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository stars | 604 |
| Forks | 264 |
| Contributors (including anonymous) | 25 |
| Reviewed papers that build on FEMU | 10, see papers |
How to take part
- Tell us how you use FEMU. Post in Show and tell: your lab, course or company, and what you emulate. It shapes what we build next.
- Ask and discuss on Discord, in GitHub Discussions, or on the mailing list, femu@googlegroups.com.
- Contribute with the first model test, a standalone exercise that needs no guest or KVM.
- Teach with FEMU using the teaching guide.
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No. 2550145. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.