Calls for supercomputing time on Magnus are now open

Calls are open for supercomputing time on Magnus at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in 2021. If you are interested in using supercomputing resources for your meritorious research between January and December in 2021, please consider applying.

The 2021 calls are for the following schemes:

  • 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.
  • 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 the new NCI Gadi system 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.

The Energy and Resources and Pawsey Partner schemes are open from 7th September to 18th October 2020.

NCMAS applications will close on 26 October, 2020.

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 as well as Topaz GPU cluster, so Zeus and Topaz specific users are also encouraged to apply (and make this clear in the application).

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, Topaz), provide detailed justification/benchmarks of how they have estimated their compute-time requirements, and state why they need to run at a Tier-1 supercomputing centre (e.g. capability-scale jobs, high throughput, data-intensive).  Pawsey staff have developed a guide for Writing a Strong Competitive Merit Application.

We encourage experienced research groups to apply for the NCMAS to maximise their opportunities and to establish a track record in NCMAS for the future.  We also encourage researchers to apply for both Magnus and NCI’s Gadi system where appropriate and justified.

There are no significant changes for the Pawsey Partner and Energy and Resources schemes application process. Allocation schemes changes for 2021, mostly related to Pawsey’s Capital Refresh Project, are discussed here.

For assistance with your application or for any other enquiries, please contact the Pawsey Helpdesk at help@pawsey.org.au.

Magnus Allocation Call