ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) Projects at NERSC

Overview

The mission of the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) is to provide an allocation program for projects of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE) with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission and for broadening the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources.

Open to scientists from the research community in industry, academia, and national laboratories, the ALCC program allocates time on computational resources at ASCR’s supercomputing facilities. ASCR supercomputing facilities include NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Leadership Computing Facilities at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. These resources represent some of the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputers. 

Allocations of computer time are awarded through a competitive process by the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. For more information about the program and instructions on how to apply see the DOE ALCC page.  

Allocation Period

The ALCC year runs from July to June. This is shifted six months from the NERSC allocation cycle, so the full ALCC award for each project is allocated 50% in one NERSC allocation year and 50 percent in the next. Any, or all, of this time can be shifted from one year to the next upon request. Unused time from July through December is automatically transferred into the following year, however ALCC awarded time does not carry over past June 30.

ALCC allocations are given in node-hours. These are converted to NERSC hours. A description of how jobs are charged can be found here: How Usage is Charged

NERSC ALCC Projects for 2021-2022

For the ALCC 2021-2022 campaign, ASCR received 78 proposals and, through a competitive review process, chose 41 proposals to receive allocations totaling 22 million node-hours. At NERSC, 11 research teams received a total of 8.25 million node-hours to use on the Cori supercomputer:

• Ethan Coon (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), J. David Moulton (Los Alamos National Laboratory - co-PI), Scott Painter (Oakridge National Laboratory - co-PI), Carl Steefel (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - co-PI), Dipankar Dwivedi (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Xingyuan Chen (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Alison Appling (USGS), Alex Sun (Univ. of Texas, Austin) received 270,000 node-hours for "Advancing Watershed System Science using Machine Learning and Extreme-Scale Simulation".
• Sean Couch (Michigan State University), Evan O'Connor (Stockholm University - co-PI), Zac Johnston (Michigan State University) received 1,600,000 node-hours for "Simulating Extreme Stellar Death: Magnetorotational Supernovae and Black Hole Formation".
• Frederico Fiuza (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory), Arno Vanthieghem (Stanford University - co-PI), Ryan Peterson (Stanford University), Anna Grassi (Sorbonne University) received 820,000 node-hours for "Particle heating and acceleration in laboratory collisionless shocks".
• Michael Gao (National Energy Technology Laboratory), Laurent Capolungo (Los Alamos National Laboratory - co-PI), Tianle Cheng (National Energy Technology Laboratory) received 730,000 node-hours for "Predicting the performance of heat-resistant alloys in extreme environments".
• Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli (MIT DMSE), Livia Giordano (MIT MechE - co-PI), Ben Blaiszik (Argonne National Laboratory - co-PI), Yang-Shao Horn (MIT MechE - co-PI), Elsa Olivetti (MIT DMSE), Debbie Myers (Argonne National Laborator), Kripa Varanasi (MIT Mech E) received 200,000 node-hours for "Inverse design of multicomponent oxide catalysts with generative models and DFT".
• Forrest Hoffman (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), David Lawrence (National Center for Atmospheric Research), Charles D. Koven (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), William J. Riley (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), James T. Randerson (University of California Irvine) received 550,000 node-hours for "E3SM Land Model (ELM) Biogeochemistry Perturbed Parameter Ensembles Project".
• Ashlie Martini (University of California Merced), Dr. Tevis D. B. Jacobs (University of Pittsburgh - co-PI), Dr. Ingrid M. Padilla Espinosa (University of California, Merced), Mohammad R. Vazirisereshk (University of California, Merced) received 300,000 node-hours for "Understanding the Role of Surface Energy in the Deformation of Metal Nanoparticles".
• Parviz Moin (Stanford University), Suhas S. Jain (Stanford University), W. H. Ronald Chan (Stanford University), Sanjeeb Bose (Stanford University and Cascade Technologies, Inc.) received 500,000 node-hours for "Multiscale bubble breakup and gas transfer in turbulent oceanic environments".
• Chuang Ren (University of Rochester), Riccardo Betti (University of Rochester) received 800,000 node-hours for "Predicting hot electrons for inertial confinement fusion".
• Brian Wirth (University of Tennessee), David Bernholdt (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Aidan Thompson (Sandia National Laboratory),  Karl Hammond (University of Missouri), Wahyu Setyawan (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Ilon Joseph (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) received 1,680,000 node-hours for "Plasma Surface Interaction Modeling".
• Xinlu Xu (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory), Mark Hogan (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory - co-PI), Warren Mori (UCLA - co-PI) received 800,000 node-hours for "Compact coherent X-ray sources based on plasma-based acceleration".