The Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) provides large computing resources for university researchers in atmospheric, oceanic, and related sciences. To access these supercomputers, storage systems, and other resources, users must apply for allocations, which NCAR makes available through several facilities. Applications are reviewed and time is allocated according to the needs of the projects and the availability of resources. Questions on the following allocation opportunities may be directed to alloc@ucar.edu.
The deployment of the Yellowstone environment at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) made greatly expanded resources and opportunities available to researchers in the atmospheric and related sciences. The new HPC system provides more than 600 million core-hours for allocation each year.
To better manage the resources available to the various CISL user communities, new allocation and accounting procedures were rolled out to coincide with the new NWSC requests. These new procedures make it easier for users to request and track their resource usage and to help support their associated data management plans.
Allocations generally are required for access to the HPC, data analysis, visualization, and storage systems that CISL manages. Access to data collections via the Research Data Archive, Community Data Portal, and Earth System Grid may require separate registration for access to some data sets, but allocations are not required.
Eleven large-scale, short-term university and NCAR projects that received 2012 Accelerated Scientific Discovery (ASD) awards began putting the Yellowstone system through its paces December 1, 2012. The ASD allocation opportunity will be available again with CISL's next HPC procurement.
Information about the 2012 projects is available on the following pages.
The Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL) at NCAR is a dedicated climate model computing facility supported by the multiagency U.S. Global Change Research Program. It targets large-scale, long-running simulations of the Earth's climate system. Approximately 250 million core-hours over 18 months will be available to CSL projects. The next CSL opportunity will be announced in late 2013.
Eligibility. The CSL is open to all principal investigators funded or supported by a U.S. university, U.S. federal or state agency, or U.S. not-for-profit research laboratory. CSL requests must satisfy additional eligibility criteria for use of this facility.
NCAR provides computing resources to the university community for investigations beyond the scope of university computing centers. University researchers have access to Yellowstone, the University of Colorado-NCAR Janus Cluster, and CISL’s analysis, visualization, and storage systems. Please see the University allocations page for details.
The deadline for submitting large university requests for review by the CISL HPC Advisory Panel (CHAP) was April 4, 2013. The deadline for fall submissions will be announced in May. More than 80 million core-hours will be allocated during each semi-annual CHAP allocation cycle.
Eligibility. In general, any U.S.-based researcher with an NSF award in the atmospheric or closely related sciences is eligible to apply for a University Computing allocation. There are some limited opportunities for those without NSF awards.
NCAR investigators have access to Yellowstone resources through allocations to the NCAR labs and have opportunities to submit requests for larger-scale, project-oriented allocations. Several larger-scale projects are selected for the NCAR Accelerated Scientific Discovery period, and others will be selected as NCAR Strategic Capability projects. NCAR’s share of the Yellowstone resource will be approximately 170 million core-hours each year.
The NWSC represents a collaboration between NCAR and the University of Wyoming. As part of the Wyoming-NCAR Alliance (WNA), a portion of the Yellowstone systems — about 75 million core-hours per year — is reserved for Wyoming-led projects and allocated by a University of Wyoming-managed process. Details of the Wyoming process are available at the University of Wyoming web site.
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