Applications open for 2019 access to Pawsey Supercomputers

Researchers – calls are open for supercomputing time on Magnus at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in 2019. If you are interested in using supercomputing resources for your meritorious research between January and December in 2019, please consider applying.

The 2019 calls are for the following schemes:

  • National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) – supports computational research in all science disciplines across Australia. There are 100 million core hours available on Magnus for this call. NCMAS also provides access to NCI and other resources.
  • Energy and Resources Merit Allocation Scheme – supports Energy and Resources-focused research projects from across Australia. Energy examples include generation, storage and distribution. Resources examples include exploration, minerals extraction and processing, groundwater, and waste management. There are 55.5 million core hours available on Magnus for this call.
  • Pawsey Partner Merit Allocation Scheme – supports the whole range of computational research at Pawsey Partner institutions. Partner institutions are CSIRO, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia. Western Australian Government researchers are also eligible for the Partner Scheme. There are 110 million core hours available on Magnus for this call.

Calls for all three schemes open on the 3rd September 2018 and close on the 19th October 2018.

Pawsey’s petascale supercomputer, Magnus, is available for allocations through the current call. Magnus supports capability-scale computational research. It is a Cray XC40 system, with 1,488 compute nodes (35,712 cores) using Intel Xeon ‘Haswell’ CPUs, linked by the Cray Aries interconnect.  Some applicants may be allocated onto the Zeus cluster, which contains a CPU partition and a modest GPU partition, so GPU users are also encouraged to apply.
As a guide, we anticipate requests to be in the order of 1-10 million core hours, although smaller (and larger) requests will be considered. Applicants should confirm their software can run effectively on Magnus (or Zeus GPUs), and provide detailed justification/benchmarks of how they have estimated their compute-time requirements.  Pawsey staff have developed a guide towards a strong competitive merit application.
We encourage experienced research groups from the Pawsey partners to apply for the NCMAS and the Energy and Resources Schemes to maximise their opportunities. If unsuccessful or partially successful their applications will be re-evaluated in the Pawsey Partner scheme.
There are no significant changes for this call, with minor procedural changes to NCMAS.
Pawsey is offering a technical pre-submission check for proposals. Upon request, Pawsey supercomputing staff will check an application, highlighting any potential omissions or errors they identify, plus suggesting changes that may improve the technical assessment for the proposal.

 

For NCMAS applications this must occur via email (send us a copy before submission) rather than by Pawsey staff accessing the form.  Project leaders should email a request to help@pawsey.org.au in advance of 5/10/2018.
For assistance with your application or for any other enquiries, please contact the Pawsey Helpdesk at help@pawsey.org.au.