Director’s Discretion Project Request


INSTRUCTIONS:

This form is to be used by the principal investigator (PI) to request a new project on the NCCS resources.

  1. Complete the Principal Investigator's Agreement and fax it to 865-241-4011.
  2. Fill in all applicable information.
  3. Click on "submit" button at bottom of this page to submit your application.
  4. After you've requested a project, what happens next?
  5. * indicates required fields

If you want an account on an existing NCCS project, please apply using the NCCS Join an Existing Project application form.

Direct any questions to the NCCS User Assistance Center.

Personal Information
* Title: Dr. Mr. Ms. Mrs. Miss
* First name:
* Last name:
Middle name:
Suffix (Sr. Jr. III, etc.):
* Email:
* Phone:
* Current (or requested) username:
* 300-800 word bio characterizing HPC experience:

Citizenship Status
* U.S. Citizen Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) Other
* Countries of Citizenship:
* Birth Country:

Mailing Address
* Institution:
* Mailstop/P.O. Box:
* Street Address:
* City:
* State:
* ZIP:
* Country:

Employment Information
* Institution Type:     DOE     Government (not DOE)     University     Industry
Foreign    Other
* Select your employer from the list:
To "unclick" an institution, press ctrl and the selected item









If your employer is not in the above list, or you are employed by additional institutions, please specify:

Project Information

* Project Investigators (PI):

* Project Name:

* Project references and peer reviews
  • Give evidence for this work having been or currently undergoing peer review (ex. refereed journal articles derived from this work, support from leaders in the field, etc.)
  • Provide affirmation of support (name of program manager, grant number, etc.)
* Choose the primary source(s) of the project's funding


If you have another primary source of funding...


* Select the most appropriate research area/science category for this project:


Project Requirements

* Indicate the number of CPU hours requested on each system
(Access to any system includes HPSS access)

Jaguar (100,000 hour limit):
IBM Blue Gene/P (Eugene):
Data Analysis Cluster (Lens):
Power Wall (Everest):
Smoky:

HPSS (Only Access)


* Identify a project type that aligns with the objectives of this allocation request
Leadership computing preparation (6-12 month duration)
  • For exploratory pilot projects and potential next-generation INCITE projects.
Strategic partnerships (6-12 month duration)
  • For projects aligned with strategic and programmatic directions in the DOE and ORNL. Motivation is program development, science output, new partnerships.
  • Programmatic/strategic science areas of specific interest are bioenergy, nanoscience, geosciences, energy storage, engineering sciences, and climate.
Application performance and data analytics (6 month duration)
  • For projects typified by computer science support and R&D focused on maximizing scientific application efficiency and productivity on leadership computing platforms. Application performance benchmarking, analysis, modeling, and scaling studies. End-to-end workflow, visualization, data analytics.
Other:
  • Projects allocations typically range up to 1,000,000 processor hours. Requests on the order of a million hours require substantial justification; the NCCS expects to award 8-10 such projects annually.
  • Provide justification if multiple resources are requested.
* What is the requested project duration? (up to 12 months)
Provide justification for the requested project duration.
* What type of NCCS support will this project benefit the most from?
Fundamental user assistance porting, scripting, and understanding system environments
In-depth scientific computing (ex. code evolution, collaboration)
Visualization support for data analysis

Description of Research

* Research Objectives: Describe the proposed research, including its goals and the theoretical and computational methods it employs, concisely but to the extent that reviewers can understand its intent. Proposals will be evaluated on both scientific and computational merit. For strategic partnerships proposals identify its relationship to ORNL mission(s) and collaborations with ORNL.

* Identify project milestones (including end-of-project goals): Achievement of milestones will determine the level of continuing support (allocation time, etc.)

* Significance of Research: Place the proposed research in the context of competing work in your discipline. In addition, explain what scientific advance you expect to be enabled by a Director's Discretion award that justifies an allocation of large-scale resources.


* Software Information : List each application software package to be used in the project proosal, including analysis packages.

Software Package Name Open Source? Commercial/Proprietary Export Controlled? *Export Control Classification Number

* Computational Approach : For each of the major application codes you intend to use for this project,describe the computational techniques that you will use. Include:

  • Application code name.
  • Programming languages, libraries, and other software used
  • Description of the underlying mathematical formulation (e.g., ODE, PDE).
  • Algorithms and numerical techniques employed (e.g.,finite element, iterative solver).
  • Parallel programming system used (e.g., MPI, OpenMP, "embarrassingly" parallel).
  • Description of the role collaborative analysis/visualization plays in your discovery process; Identify any current bottlenecks in your analysis.
Job Characterization:
  • Describe typical simulation job execution parameters (number of processors, average wall clock execution time.
  • Explain how the processor hours requested was arrived at.
  • Estimate the percentages of project time you will spend on development (ex. porting, code analysis), production computing, other.

Application Parallel Performance: Provide direct evidence, including supporting quantitative data, for your project's application parallel performance. Supporting quantitative data should be provided in either tabular or graphical form, or both; also a speedup curve should be supplied for strong scaling examples. If the performance data indicates less than 50% efficiency on less than 256 nodes, please delineate the path forward for achieving greater performance on much larger scale simulations with the requested NCCS resources. Without this data, application readiness cannot be adequately ascertained and hence awarding this NCCS allocation request will be placed in jeopardy. See Example

I/O Requirements:

Restart I/O: Describe your I/O requirements for program restart. Include a list the types of files you write out for program restarts, i.e. MPI/IO, raw binary, serial from all processors, HDF5, etc. and the following quantitative information: how much restart data you write out; how many processors write-out restart data; how much memory your job takes per processor; the size of a single restart dump, etc.

Analysis I/O: Describe your I/O requirements for analysis. Include a list of the types of files you write out for analysis, i.e. HDF5, NetCDF, PHDF5, PnetCDF; size of analysis dump; amount and type of data read into your analysis program, etc.
Data Transfer I/O: What portion of your data do you transfer to your home institution?
Archival I/O: What portion of your data will you archive at the NCCS?

Proprietary and Sensitive Information

* Does this project generate publishable data?
Yes   No

* Does this project use or generate proprietary data?
Yes   No

* Does this project use or generate sensitive or restricted information?
Yes   No


Export Control

The following questions are provided to determine whether research associated with a Director's Discretion proposal may be export controlled. Responding to these questions can facilitate - but not substitute for - any export control review required for this proposal.

* Does the proposed project involve any of the following areas?
Yes   No
  • Military, Space Craft, Satellites, Missiles, and associated hardware, software or technical data?
  • Nuclear Reactors & Components, Nuclear Material Enrichment Equipment, Components (Trigger List) and associated hardware, software or technical data?
  • Encryption about 128 bit software (source & object code)?
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction or their precursors (nuclear, chemical, & biological)?
* Does the proposed project use and/or create proprietary information, intellectual property, licensing, or will utilize controlled technology in any of these categories in pursuit of the project objectives?
Yes   No

* Are the proposed project and its intended subject matter deliverables considered Fundamental Research or Publicly Available Information as under National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 189?
Yes   No

Comments and Questions
Why are you applying for this discretionary allocation award at the NCCS? How did you hear about the ORNL NCCS and this discretionary allocation award process?
If awarded time, do you agree to provide periodic updates of research accomplishments?
Yes   No
Comments or Questions?

By submitting this application, I certify that the information I have provided is accurate and complete.