Allocations at 1st May 2019 for Extreme Scaling Edinburgh. All projects start on the first of the month and end on the last of the month.

For more information please email the Project Office.

Table 1: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Extreme Scaling Edinburgh.

Allocations at 1st May 2019 for Memory Intensive Durham. All projects start on the first of the month and end on the last of the month.

For more information please email the Project Office.

Table 1: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Memory Intensive Durham.

Allocations at 1st May 2019 for Data Intensive Leicester. All projects start on the first of the month and end on the last of the month.

For more information please email the Project Office.

Table 1: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Data Intensive Leicester.

Allocations at 1st May 2019 for Data Intensive Cambridge. All projects start on the first of the month and end on the last of the month.

For more information please email the Project Office.

Table 1: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Data Intensive Cambridge.

After each Call has been concluded we publish the compute time allocated to each project, in terms of CPU-Mhours on the DiRAC Resource on which the calculations are to be run, as well as the Storage Space [TB] allocated. In DiRAC we have three compute services and due to the different architectures on each service, the CPU-Mhours awarded to projects using different services may not be directly comprable. All projects start on the first of the month and end on the last of the month.

For more information please email the Project Office

Table 1: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Data Intensive Cambridge.

Table 2: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Data Intensive Leicester.

Table 3: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Memory Intensive Durham.

Table 4: Time Allocations and Storage from the 11th Resource Allocation Committee Call for Proposals for Extreme Scaling Edinburgh.

This Call closed on 30th January 2019

Special Call for DiRAC-2.5y Director’s Discretionary proposals 

The DiRAC Director invites the UK theory and modelling communities in Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics to apply for discretionary computational resources on the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility.

 Scope 

To celebrate the commissioning of the new DiRAC-2.5y Data Intensive and Memory Intensive services, the Director has decided to make a number of large discretionary awards of DiRAC time on these services during the period January-March 2019. These awards will be made to proposals of outstanding scientific interest and timeliness and which can demonstrate significant benefit from concurrent access to large numbers of nodes during the period prior to commencement of the RAC 11 awards. 

Proposals should be ambitious in scope – this is an opportunity to carry out large and/or calculations that might not fit within your existing RAC allocations. 

All codes used must have undergone a technical review as part of the RAC process. Codes which have not done so will be requested to submit a technical case prior to the application being considered. 

All awarded time must be used by March 31st 2019 and no requests to extend beyond this date will be accepted. 

Application process: proposals should be submitted using the DiRAC-2.5y Director’s Discretionary Call application form. The form is attached to this e-mail and will also be available from the DiRAC website.

You must include the application number where the required technical case associated with the software to be used in this application can be obtained. You do not need to resubmit technical information that you have already provided – however, you may be asked to provide evidence of the scalability of your codes if you will be using the code at a larger scale than was previously requested.

Assessment process: Proposals will be reviewed by the Director, the RAC chairs and the Technical Manager. 

Closing date: the initial closing date will be 5pm on 18th January 2019. However, proposals will continue to be accepted after this date until all Friday 22nd February or until available resources have been awarded, whichever is the earlier. 

Assessment criteria: Proposals will be assessed based on the following criteria: 

1. Scientific impact – 60% 
2. Track record of user/group – 20% 
3. Timeliness/urgency – why would performing this calculation in Jan-Mar 2019 enhance the impact of your science? – 20%

A pdf version of the Application Form is available here.

And a word copy of the Application Form is available here.

Please send the form to DiRACSEEDCORN@jiscmail.ac.uk.  (You will receive a mail from JISC requesting positive confirmation that the email did originate with you (to cut down on spam).  Simply click on the link in Jisc’s email to approve the message for delivery.)

Access to DiRAC is co-ordinated by The STFC’s DiRAC Resource Allocation Committee, which puts out an annual Call for Proposals to request time for a Full Project Allocation and also operates a Seedcorn Time programme.

Seedcorn Time Programme

For researchers who would like to try the DiRAC resources, get a feel for HPC, test codes, benchmark or see what the DiRAC resources can do for you before making a full application for resources, an application can be made for seedcorn time.

Existing users may also apply for seedcorn allocations to enable code development/testing on a service which is not currently part of their project allocation.

You can apply for seedcorn time at any time.

Seedcorn Application

The maximum allocation of seedcorn time will be 50,000 x86 core hours or 1,000 GPU hours or 1,000 KNL node hours. Your hours can be used at any time within three months from the date it is allocated.

An overview of the DiRAC hardware resources can be found here.

If you would like to apply please fill in this simple “Seedcorn” Application Form and send it to DIRACSEEDCORN@jiscmail.ac.uk.  (You will receive a mail from JISC requesting positive confirmation that the email did originate with you (to cut down on spam).  Simply click on the link in Jisc’s email to approve the message for delivery.)

You will need to provide your personal details, the codes that you intend to run and what libraries and tools are required for you to run the code, if known. We also would like to know what you intend to achieve with your allocation and of course which of the four DiRAC systems you would like to use.

You should be able to complete the form in around 15 minutes.

The decision process for Seedcorn applications is streamlined and should take no more that 1 week.

SuperComputing Wales Research Symposium 2018
13th September
Swansea University

The Swansea Academy of Advanced Computing (SA2C) are hosting this event to bring together the Supercomputing Wales community and give users a forum to showcase their research to the wider HPC community and network with other supercomputing specialists.

Whilst primarily aimed at the Swansea community, this event is open to all DiRAC HPC users who would like to present their research. The event will include research talks, a poster session, and opportunities for discussion about HPC, the Supercomputing Wales project and their SUNBIRD machine.

SAC2 facilitates Swansea researchers in using HPC technologies by enabling access to a HPC computing platform and Research Software Engineers (RSEs) to assist in its use. These resources are funded via the Supercomputing Wales project (SCW).

Registration for this event is via Eventbrite and can be accessed here. The Eventbrite page also has a Preliminary Agenda for the day, which will be updated closer to the event. Accomodation booking on the University Campus is available through Swansea’s DiRAC Day website.

NVidia Hackathon
9th, 10th & 11th September
Swansea University

Call for Team Applications

We are pleased to announce that Nvidia have generously agreed to sponsor a 3-day GPU hackathon in Swansea prior to DiRAC Day 2018. This team event will provide the DiRAC community with the opportunity to explore the potential for GPUs in supporting their science.

The Hackathon is open to all DiRAC HPC users and we expect to be able to offer places to 5 or 6 teams of between 3 and 5 people each. Over the three days, we hope that several major DiRAC science codes will be ported to GPUs and that the teams who attend will gain the skills to assist other DiRAC researchers to port additional codes in the future. This is part of our on-going work to ensure that DiRAC provides the most appropriate hardware for your science and the hackathon will help provide input to discussions on the design of future DiRAC systems.

No prior experience of GPU programming is required – there will be online training material in advance of the hackathon itself to provide an introduction. Teams of 3-5 people can apply with 1 or 2 codes to be worked on. It’s important that all those who attend are familiar with the code that their team will be working on.

Download the Application Form and return it to the DiRAC Project Office by the 23rd July 2018. We will contact all applicants with the results in early August.

Accomodation booking is available through Swansea University’s DiRAC Day website. Some funding for a small number of students to help with accomodation may be available and if you or your team members would like to apply for this, please indicate numbers on your Application Form at Q11.

Essentials Level Test

The test is taken online and you can use the web, ‘man’ pages and any other resources you would usually use when programming. The questions are mostly independent and you can answer them in any order.

You will need to clone a git repository and full instructions can be found either here or through the GitHub icon in the top right-hand corner of our webpages.

The test takes around 90 minutes from when you enter your name, email and affiliation.

Please make sure you have read our Data Privacy Policy before you take the test.

When you’re ready, click on the link below….

Take the test here

The test is mandatory for those who are studying for advanced degrees, such as M.Sc. and Ph.D., and those employed as Post-Doctoral Research Assistants/Associates who have less than two years HPC experience.

The Test is graded as follows:

• 60% and above: Pass: The test was completed successfully
• Up to 60%: Fail: You will have three months to re-take the test from the date of receiving your results.

The 2018/19 test round was launched at the beginning of October 2018 and closes on January 11th 2019 – all elegible users should aim to complete it by that date. Results will be emailed to you at the end of February 2019.

If you have not taken/passed the test by the deadline we will contact you and your supervisor to discuss your case. At this point we will be able to arrange further assistance for you so you can pass the test and continue to use DiRAC resources in your research.

During the registration process we asked you to complete a small number of multiple-choice questions designed to assess your starting skill-level in the various areas where we provide training.

At the end of the Essentials Level test, we have asked these questions again and it would be very useful to us if you could re-assess that skill-level in the light of any training you have taken and tell us how you think your skill-set has changed. The questions will only take a couple of minutes to answer.

We use the information from these pre- and post-training surveys to help us better understand the needs of our user community and to identify areas where we can improve and more closely target our training offering to those needs. Our aim is to continually develop and innovate DiRAC’s training offering as those needs evolve.

The information you give will not be shared with anyone outside our small training team and we will never share your personal contact information with any external organisation. Once matched-up, your responses to the pre- and post-training surveys are fully anonymised before any analysis is undertaken.

To read more about how we handle your data please take a look at our Data Privacy Policy.