CHAP: April 2011 Meeting

The CISL HPC Advisory Panel (CHAP) met on April 21, 2011, to review and recommend allocations for computational requests from university researchers with an NSF award in the atmospheric or closely related sciences. The CHAP’s focus continues to be on the computational experiments being proposed and their efficiency.

There were 23 requests from university researchers requesting large allocations, reflecting a continued high level of interest in CISL resources; 22 requests received an allocation.

University researchers requested a total of 13.8M GAUs (General Allocation Units), which represented 2 times the resources available. Requests ranged from a high of 2.6M GAUs to a low of 51k GAUs. The median request size was 400k GAUs.

Approximately 6.6M GAUs were allocated by the CHAP with allocations ranging from 750k GAUs to 51k GAUs. The median allocation was 218k GAUs. Because of the high request levels, the CHAP limited most allocations for multi-year projects to resources needed for the next year and looked more closely at the computational experiments being proposed. The CHAP encourages all university projects to consider the expected increase in available computing resources in mid-2012 with the opening of the NCAR Wyoming Supercomputer Center.

The distribution of allocations is given in the chart below.

Not shown on the chart are the small requests and allocations for the university research community. During the six months preceding the April 2011 panel meeting, 61 small allocations were made for a total of about 377k GAUs. So the total of university allocations for the past 6 months is 7.0M GAUs. 

CISL Presentations to CHAP

CISL Operations and NWSC Update, Anke Kamrath, CISL
NWCS Allocations Plans, David Hart, CISL 

CHAP Advisory Letter

April 26, 2011 (PDF), CHAP Chair

CHAP Agenda

Thursday, April 21, 2011
VisLab (1st Basement), Mesa Lab
1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO