2009 Call for Proposals for NERSC Resources

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. Proposals must support the mission of the Office of Science.

The deadline for submitting 2009 NERSC proposals is Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 11:59 PM Pacific Time. Award decisions for requests submitted before this deadline will be emailed to Principal Investigators and PI Proxies on December 12. Requests made after October 1 will be reviewed in January.

2009 allocations will be for period January 13, 2009, through January 11, 2010.

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) 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 allocations, however, are handled separately from ERCAP. Use of the PDSF is restricted to researchers in the high energy physics and nuclear science communities.

For more information on ERCAP see the Allocations Page.

• What's New for 2009?
• Eligibility
• New Principal Investigators
• Accessing the ERCAP Request Form
• Designating proxies to fill out the Request Form
• Help

What's New for 2009?

1. In 2009 MPP charging will be based on the Cray XT4 hour, rather than the IBM POWER3 hour used in 2008. On the request form you will see your current MPP usage displayed in Cray XT4 hours, and you should request time for 2009 using these units as well.
2. Jacquard will be retired after the 2008 allocation year, which ends January 12. The MPP machines available for 2009 are:
   • the Cray XT4, Franklin, which will have a machine charge factor of 1 (the base unit)
   • the IBM POWER5, Bassi, which will have a machine charge factor of 1.
   • the SGI Altix, DaVinci, which will have a machine charge factor of 0.6.
3. Several of the questions in the Data and Networking section have been reformtated.
4. The text boxes on the request form now display how many characters you have entered, and how many remain available to enter.
5. The MPP request limit for startup requests has been increased to 15,000 Cray XT4 hours.

Eligibility

NERSC supports research that reflects the mission of DOE's Office of Science. 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. They must also fill out and fax back NERSC's Computer Use Policies Form. 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 your NERSC login name and password. If you have forgotten your NERSC 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 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 see Help for the ERCAP Allocations Request Form.

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 ERCAP Authorizations.

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. If you have forgotten your NERSC password please call the Account Support Office at 1-800-66-NERSC menu option 2, or 1-510-486-8612.