Clients, Sponsors, and Advisors
NERSC served 2,323 scientists throughout the United States in FY 2003. These researchers work in DOE laboratories, universities, industry, and other Federal agencies. Figure 1 shows the proportion of NERSC usage by each type of institution, while Figures 2 and 3 show laboratory, university, and other organizations that used large allocations of computer time. Computational science conducted at NERSC covers the entire range of scientific disciplines, but is focused on research that supports the DOE’s mission and scientific goals, as shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 1 |
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Figure 2 |
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Figure 3 |
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Figure 4 |
Allocations of computer time and archival storage at NERSC are awarded to research groups, regardless of their source of funding, based on an annual review of proposals. As proposals are submitted, they are subjected to peer review by the Computational Review Panel (CORP, Appendix B) to evaluate the computational approach and the readiness of the applicant’s codes to fully utilize the computing resources being requested. DOE Office of Science program managers and the Supercomputing Allocations Committee (SAC, see Appendix D) review and make award decisions for all “base award” requests, reflecting their mission priorities. SciDAC awards are made by the SciDAC Resource Allocation Management Team, while allocations for small startup projects are determined by NERSC.
For FY 2004, a new program entitled Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) awarded 10% of NERSC resources to three computationally intensive research projects that were judged capable of making high-impact scientific advances through the use of a large allocation of computer time and data storage. The three projects are: Thermonuclear Supernovae: Stellar Explosions in Three Dimensions; Fluid Turbulence and Mixing at High Reynolds Number; and Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Photoprotection via Carotenoids in Photosynthetic Centers.
Two other groups provide general oversight for the NERSC Center: the NERSC Policy Board (Appendix A) advises the Berkeley Lab Director on the policies that determine the impact and performance of the NERSC Center, and the NERSC Users Group (Appendix C) advises the NERSC management and provides feedback from the user community. DOE program management is provided by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (Appendix E), with advice from the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (Appendix F).