2006 call for proposals to use NERSC resources

From: Francesca Verdier (fverdier_at_lbl.gov)
Date: 06/30/2005


Dear NERSC Principal Investigators and Project Managers,

The Office of Science of the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) solicits 
proposals for allocations of high performance computing resources at the 
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence 
Berkeley National Laboratory and the leadership class computing 
resources at the Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) at Oak Ridge 
National Laboratory. Proposals must support the mission of the Office of 
Science.

The press release is at 
http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=18256&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE 
<%20http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=18256&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE>. 
The FY2006 Call for Proposals is at 
http://hpc.science.doe.gov/proposalCallFY06.do.

The deadline for submitting NERSC proposals is Thursday, September 1, 2005.

2006 Allocations will be for the ten month period from December 1, 2005, 
through September 30, 2006. Starting in 2007 NERSC will again use the 
DOE fiscal year for its allocations cycle.

A total of 50 million IBM SP Power3 equivalent processor-hours will be 
awarded on the IBM SP </nusers/resources/SP/> and other computational 
resources currently being deployed. 11.5 million Storage Resource Units 
</nusers/accounts/hpss-charging.php> will be awarded for the HPSS 
</nusers/resources/HPSS> mass storage system.

Requests to use NERSC resources are submitted via a web form known as 
the ERCAP (Energy Research Computing Allocations Process) Request Form. 
ERCAP is accessed through the NERSC Information Management (NIM 
</nusers/accounts/nim/>) system at http://nim.nersc.gov/.

In addition, requests to use the NERSC's Parallel Distributed Systems 
Facility </nusers/resources/PDSF/> (PDSF) and to renew PDSF projects are 
part of the ERCAP Form. PDSF allocations, however, are handled 
separately from ERCAP.

The 2006 ERCAP interface opens on Thursday, June 30, 2005. The deadline 
to submit requests is Thursday, September 1, 2005. Award decisions for 
requests submitted before this deadline will be emailed to Principal 
Investigators on November 11. Requests made after September 1 will be 
reviewed in December.

For more information on ERCAP see: 
http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/ <ercap/>

Eligibility

NERSC supports research that reflects the mission of DOE's Office of 
Science (DOE SC). See: 
http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/mission.php 
<ercap/mission.php>. All Principal Investigators funded by the Office of 
Science may apply for an allocation of NERSC resources. In addition, 
researchers who aren't directly funded by DOE SC but with projects that 
are relevant to its mission may also apply to use NERSC resources. Up to 
seven percent of NERSC's resources may be awarded to relevant projects 
that aren't directly funded by the Office of Science.


      New Principal Investigators

New PIs (who do not have a NERSC login name) must fill out the ERCAP 
Access Request web form at: https://nim.nersc.gov/newpi.php. They must 
also fill out and fax back NERSC's Computer Use Policies Form at: 
http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/usage.php 
</nusers/accounts/usage.php> Once this is done the Account Support group 
will notify the new PI of their NIM login name and password.


      Accessing the ERCAP Request Form

The ERCAP request form is accessed from NIM at http://nim.nersc.gov. You 
log into NIM using one of your NERSC login names (this can be an SP or 
HPSS login name, or a "NIM only" login name) and your NIM password. If 
you have forgotten your NIM password please contact the Account Support 
Office at 1-800-66-NERSC menu option 2, or 1-510-486-8612.

After you have logged into NIM select *My ERCAP Requests* from the *My 
Stuff* pull-down list in the NIM main menu.

The questions on the 2006 request form are divided into several 
sections. Each section is grouped under a tab. When you first renew a 
previous year's request, or when you first create a new request, you 
will be in the first tab, called *Project Overview*. The other tabs are 
not clickable until you have saved the Project Overview; after which you 
can click on any tab in any order.

You MUST click the "Save" button at the bottom of each section in order 
to save your work in that section before selecting another tab.

Note that some of the questions on the Request Form have an information 
icon associated with then; you can click this icon to get more detailed 
instructions for that question.

For more help: 
http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/help.php 
<ercap/help.php>


      Designating proxies to fill out the Request Form

Principal Investigators can designate one or more "PI Proxies" who write 
the request form for the PI (or in conjunction with the PI). See 
http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/access.php#auth 
</nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/access.php#auth>.


      Help

If you need help filling out a request form please contact a NERSC 
consultant at 1-800-66-NERSC menu option 3, 1-510-486-8611, or 
consult@nersc.gov <mailto:consult@nersc.gov>. If you have forgotten your 
NIM password please call the Account Support Office at 1-800-66-NERSC 
menu option 2, or 1-510-486-8612.


Sincerely,

-- 
Francesca Verdier                   email: fverdier@lbl.gov
Group Lead, NERSC User Services     phone: 510-486-7193

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