2nd Call for Requests for Extra Resources Access in cluster Leftraru

Submissions deadline: May 31st 2017

 
The Scientific Strategic Committee (CCE) of the NLHPC has decided to call for requests for extra access to computational resources to the users, in order to offer equality of opportunities to the different users of Leftraru, including those that require a bigger quantity of computational resources than the ones offered in the basic plan to run their simulations. On this account, this committee will evaluate all the requests for resources that in a period of six months or less would like to access to more than 240 compute cores during 60 days or its equivalent in compute hours (60 days * 24 hours * 240 cores = 345600 hours), or, if the access required corresponds to 500 cores or more, regardless of the time these will be used. Those requests that require a quantity of resources lower than this, but higher than the one offered on the basic plan, will be evaluated with the Executive Committee (CE) of the NLHPC.

Currently, users can access to 120 compute cores and 80 GB Lustre high performance storage free of charge. The latter being extendable, under explicit request of the users, for short frames of times.

Accordingly to evaluations taken by other supercomputing centers, we will perform a double filtering for the access to extra resources:

1. Initial evaluation of the scientific impact of the proposal, taken by the CCE of the NLHPC
2. A following review with the CE, that will evaluate the technical feasibility of the proposal’s execution.

Projects will be received continuously and the evaluations will be made every 4 months. Those activities requiring computational resources for more than one period, can require access for up to two periods, reporting results at the end of the first period to the CE, who will evaluate the access during the second period.

Access requests must contain the following information:

1. Global description of the research that will be performed; including the projects to which it is linked (1 page maximum).
2. Justification of the reasons why the research requires access to the computing resources (1 page maximum)
3. Detail the work team linked to the research and the areas and institutions to which they belong. Additionally, send a short version CV of the main researcher (es), including the most relevant publications in the last five years (5 pages maximum).
4. A technical description of the software to be used and the requested resources in the supercomputer (2 pages maximum).
5. If previously any of the team members had made use of the infrastructure of the NLHPC (Levque or Leftraru), must inform it explicitly in the request, detailing the time they made use of it, the results that were promised and the ones obtained.
6. Indicate if they have any source of financing with which they could contribute to the project directly or if they could do through a condominium model. The latter referring to the purchase of infrastructure that will be installed in the NLHPC, which will be used with preference by the user (es) that is making the contribution (s), but will also be used by the rest of the users. The amount of the contributions must be clearly indicated, as well as the ones previously made.

The criteria that will be followed in order to evaluate the project is listed below:

1. Relevance of the project’s impact at a national and global level (20%).
2. Justification of the need for computational resources in order to conduct the research (20%).
3. Experience of the team associated to the research, particularly in areas related to HPC. It will also be valued if it is multidisciplinary and multi institutional (20%)
4. Quality and number of publications expected from the research that will be conducted using the infrastructure of the NLHPC. Had the user made use of  the infrastructure of the NLHPC previously, it will be contrasted with the information in our databases on the promised publications and the finished ones (20%)
5. If they have contributed or will contribute infrastructure to the NLHPC through a condominium model or other means of economic contribution to the project (20%).

Please bear in mind that you will be required to show that the problem escalates well, in other words, that if you are requesting 500 compute cores, the problem would go twice as fast than with 250 cores.

After receiving the first evaluation by the CCE, the CE will proceed to evaluate the projects and prioritize them, showing the results of the call on the NLHPC’S website.

Please, send us your request and/or any enquiries at info@nlhpc.cl