2005 Call for Proposals for NERSC and MSCF Resources

The DOE Office of Science solicits proposals for large allocations of computing resources at NERSC for the period December 1, 2004 through November 30, 2005. In addition, computing resources are being made available to the Office of Science allocation process from PNNL's Molecular Science Computing Facility MSCF).

The deadline for submitting proposals is midnight, Wednesday September 1, 2004.

2005 Allocations will be made for the following Office of Science resources:

1. Seaborg, an IBM Power3 SP at NERSC with 6,080 computational processors.
2. A new computational machine at NERSC. This new system is expected to deliver at least 15% of the performance of Seaborg. The target workload is the set of codes that have problems scaling efficiently on Seaborg and which are typically run on 32 to 256 Seaborg processors. 55.5 million SP3-equivalent hours will be allocated for both Seaborg and the new system. The two systems will share a common allocation.
3. MPP2, an HP Itanium-2 Linux system at the Molecular Science Computing Facility (MSCF) at Pacific Northwest National Lab. MPP2 has 1,960 processors. Five percent of the MPP2 resources (730,000 raw hours) will be allocated by the Office of Science. The rest of the time is allocated directly by the MSCF.
4. HPSS, NERSC's Mass Storage System. 14 million Storage Resource Units will be allocated.

Requests to use these DOE Office of Science 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) system at http://nim.nersc.gov/.

In addition, requests to use the NERSC's Parallel Distributed Systems Facility (PDSF) and to renew PDSF projects are part of the ERCAP Form. PDSF awards, however, are handled separately from ERCAP. See Account Information for PDSF.

The 2005 ERCAP interface opens on Wednesday, June 30, 2004. The deadline to submit requests is midnight Wednesday, September 1, 2004. 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/

• What's new for 2005
• Eligibility
• New Principal Investigators
• Accessing the ERCAP Request Form
• Designating proxies to fill out the Request Form
• Award Types
• Help

What's new for 2005

1. Resources are no longer allocated for the federal fiscal year but rather for an "allocation year". The 2005 allocation year runs from December 1, 2004 through November 30, 2005. The 2004 allocation year runs through November 30, 2004.
2. As described above, the DOE Office of Science is using ERCAP to allocate 5 percent of the MPP2 resources at PNNL's Molecular Science Computing Facility.
3. The code performance questions on the Request Form have been modified to collect information about each code separately. Please read Help for the ERCAP Code Description questions at: http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/codehelp.php
4. The COmputational Review Panel (CORP) will review SciDAC projects this year. The following production-level requests will be reviewed by the CORP:
   • Projects requesting 400,000 or more SP-equivalent hours or 100,000 or more Storage Resource Units.
   • Projects requesting more than 150% of what they were awarded in 2004.
   • New projects and projects that have not yet been reviewed by the CORP.
   • Projects for which the PI requests a review: by sending email to: fverdier@lbl.gov.

Eligibility

NERSC and the MSCF support research that reflects the mission of DOE's Office of Science (DOE SC). See: http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/allocations/ercap/mission.php. All Principal Investigators funded by the Office of Science may apply for an allocation of NERSC and MSCF 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 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 Once this is done the Account Support group will notify the person(s) 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 pulldown menu If you made a request in 2004 you will see it in the ERCAP Request List frame. To renew an existing 2004 project for 2005 click on its renew link (located at the right end of the row for that project).

To continue working on a proposal you have previously saved use the edit link.

If you have a new project and want new project accounts (repositories) scroll to the bottom of the ERCAP Request List and:

• If you want your new project to be active before November 30, 2004 select Click here to create a new 2004 project request (ends Nov 30, 2004). Note that there are no resources to allocate to new production requests for the remainder of allocation year 2004, so this option is mostly for new Startup requests. However, if you have a new DOE project and would like to get started at NERSC before December, you may apply for a new 2004 Startup project and then renew this new project as a Production request for 2005. Please contact fverdier@lbl.gov for details.
• If you want your new project to become active on December 1, 2005 select Click here to create a new 2005 project request (starts Dec 1, 2004).

The questions on the 2005 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 (for 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

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). If you used a PI Proxy last year, this person already has access to your request(s) as a Proxy. You can check whether one of your repos has a PI Proxy associated with it by entering the repo name in the box under Repository in NIM's main menu and clicking Go.

If you need a new PI Proxy please fill out the ERCAP Access Request web form at: https://nim.nersc.gov/newpi.php or contact support@nersc.gov.

New PI Proxies must fill out and fax back NERSC's Computer Use Policies Form at: http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/accounts/usage.php.

Award Types

Three types of awards will be made for calendar year 2005:

• DOE Production Awards: These awards are for production-ready projects that receive direct grant support from the DOE Office of Science or whose research reflects the mission of DOE's Office of Science. SciDAC projects are included in this category; there are no longer separate SciDAC awards.

  DOE Production awards are made by the Office of Science Allocations Managers and DOE's Supercomputing Advisory Committee.

  For most production projects the minimum computational request is for 20,000 SP-equivalent hours. (exceptions can be made for computer science and applied math projects that only need smaller amounts of resources for testing purposes).

• INCITE Awards: Ten percent of NERSC's computational resources are set aside for Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) projects, which are competed in a separate process. The INCITE Call for Proposals will be announced in July. See the INCITE Call for Proposals.

• Startup Awards: These are awards for PIs who wish to investigate using NERSC resources for new projects, or who wish to port or develop new codes. The maximum Startup awards are 20,000 SP-equivalent hours and 5,000 Storage Resource Units. A request for a Startup repository can be made at any time during the year, and decisions for Startup requests are made within one to three weeks after submission.

  A Startup project expires after 18 months, after which time the PI must request DOE Production funding.

Help