Later this year, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will deploy Derecho, its next-generation HPC system, and NCAR will begin accepting proposals in July from university-led teams to participate in the Accelerated Scientific Discovery (ASD) program on the system.

The ASD program will provide a unique opportunity for a small group of large-scale computational projects to have nearly exclusive use of the Derecho system for a few months. During this time, ASD teams will work closely with NCAR’s high-performance computing staff to optimize their workflows, ensure that the environment is properly configured for maximum efficiency, and demonstrate the capabilities of the 19.87-petaflops system.

For university participants in the ASD program, NCAR will make about 225 million core-hours available to five or six CPU-oriented projects and 225,000 GPU-hours to three or four GPU-oriented projects. The bulk of the ASD computational runs should be completed during the first two months after Derecho is accepted – that is, in January and February 2022 as currently planned. 

The minimum scale of CPU-oriented projects is 30 million core-hours and the minimum for GPU-oriented projects is 50,000 GPU-hours. Larger-scale proposals and hybrid CPU/GPU proposals are encouraged. NCAR will provide storage resources to support ASD projects during the computational and analysis phases; long-term storage plans should be described in the proposal.

See this web page for details, including information on eligibility, proposal review considerations, the submission schedule, and project schedule. NCAR staff interested in proposing ASD projects can learn more about submitting lab proposals here: ASD on Derecho: Soliciting NCAR projects.