Most important changes
- The Pawsey Energy & Resources Merit Allocation Scheme has been discontinued. Researchers from the Australian energy and resources research community are encouraged to apply through the Submissions to NCMAS and Pawsey Partner schemes.
- In 2022 researchers applying through the NCMAS and Pawsey Partner Schemes will apply for allocations on Setonix Phase 1 (first Request) and Setonix Phase 2 (second Request) separately.
- Applicants to Pawsey Partner Scheme will use a new submission form, which is available from the Pawsey Submission Portal.
- Pawsey Partner Scheme Assessments Criteria has been updatedSchemes can now include Setonix CPU and Setonix GPU requests.
- Minimum allocation request size is now 1M Service Units.
- New accounting model for Setonix now includes Service Units definition for both Setonix CPU and GPU partitions.
- There will be no Pawsey Partner top-up allocations starting from 2023 allocation round. Researchers can apply to both NCMAS and Pawsey Partner Scheme subject to the eligibility and conditions of these schemes.
- Pawsey has improved technical review process, scalability criteria is now covering both CPU and GPU parallel scalability as well as data workflows scalability.
- The new Preparatory Access Scheme is now available for researchers who need to port and benchmark their codes and workflows before applying to one of the merit allocation schemes.
For technical details about changes in supercomputing services for 2022 visit: /wiki/spaces/US/pages/51925794
Pawsey Energy and Resources Merit Allocation Scheme
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NCMAS
- Application period opening date: 18th August 2021
- Application period closing date: 5th October 2021, 8:00pm AEDT (5:00pm AWST)
- Application form: https://my.nci.org.au/mancini/ncmas/2022/
Pawsey Partner Scheme
- Application period opening date: 31st August 2021
- Application period closing date: 11th October 2021 (5PM Anywhere on Earth time)
- Application form: https://ssl.linklings.net/organizations/pawsey/
Pawsey Partner Scheme assessment criteria
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Table 1. Changes to assessment criteria from 2022
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Research (50%)
Project Quality and Innovation (research criteria, 30%)
Investigators (research criteria, 10%)
Benefit and Impact (research criteria, 10%)
Technical (50%)
Suitability (technical criteria, 15%)
Scalability (technical criteria, 10%)
Usage (technical criteria, 10%)
Appropriateness of Request (technical criteria, 15%)
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Research (70%)
Project Quality and Innovation (research criteria, 30%)
Investigators (research criteria, 15%)
Appropriateness of Request (research criteria, 15%)
Benefit and Impact (research criteria, 10%)
Technical (30%)
Suitability (technical review, 15%)
Scalability (technical review, 15%)
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2023 visit: Changes in Supercomputing Services for 2023
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Available resources for 2023 allocations (Pawsey Supercomputing Centre)
The computational resources available to researchers through the Pawsey Partner and NCMAS schemes will increase substantially with the delivery of Setonix Phase 2 in the second half of 2022. In 2022 researchers applying through these schemes will apply separately for allocations on Setonix Phase 1 (first request) and Setonix Phase 2 (second request).
The applications will be open only for Setonix CPU partition allocations.
Resources available for first and second requests and minimum allocation sizes are presented in table 2.
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Table 2. Resources available for first and second requests
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First Request
full year
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Second Request
2H 2022 pro-rata
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Single application to National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) and Pawsey Partner Merit Allocation Scheme schemes can now include Setonix-CPU and Setonix-GPU requests. Researchers can apply only for Setonix-CPU allocation, only for Setonix-GPU allocation or for both.
The minimum allocation request for National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) and Pawsey Partner Merit Allocation Scheme is 1M Service Units.
Resources available in 2023 allocation round are presented in table 1.
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100k Service Units |
max. 155M Service Units | Minimum request size | 250k Service Units | 1M Service Units | | |||||||||||||
At the time of writing, the exact date of Setonix Phase 2 availability for researchers is not known. The maximum capacity in each scheme was calculated based on assumption that Setonix Phase 2 will become available from July 2022. The actual allocation sizes for secondary requests will be scaled pro-rata based on Setonix Phase 2 availability. Here are two example scenarios:
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Research group A applied for and was awarded 2M SUs on Setonix Phase 1 and 10M SUs on Setonix Phase 2. The real allocation of research group A is:
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Research group B applied for and was awarded 1M SUs on Setonix Phase 1 and 5M SUs on Setonix Phase 2. The real allocation of research group B is:
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There is no maximum limit to the amount of time that can be requested. However, partial allocations may be awarded depending on the availability and demand for allocations within the scheme.
Note that 250,000 core hours in a year is approximately the equivalent of two 16-core workstations. Applications for such small allocations must specify why access to a supercomputer is necessary for the research. Based on the scoring criteria below such uses of the supercomputer are unlikely to be competitive against other applications that demonstrate they need the expensive interconnect. Nimbus Documentation Landing Page is better suited to single-node applications and has a lightweight application process. The minimum allocation size is higher for the second Request and will increase to 2M SUs per year in 2023 when both CPU and GPU partitions of Setonix will be available for Merit Allocation Schemes.
Other non-Pawsey resources are available under the NCMAS, including NCI's Gadi supercomputer.
Timeline
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| Milestone | Pawsey Partner Scheme | NCMAS | Calls Open 31st August 2021 - 11th October 2021 (5pm Anywhere on Earth Time) 18th August 2021 - 5th October 2021 (5pm AEDT) | | 13th - 17thDecember 2021Committee Meetings 1-2-3 December 2021 | Applicants Notified | 21st December 202122nd December 2021
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