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 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 updated

For technical details about changes in supercomputing services for 2022 visit: /wiki/spaces/US/pages/51925794

Pawsey Energy and Resources Merit Allocation Scheme

This scheme has been discontinued. Researchers from the Australian energy and resources research community are encouraged to apply through NCMAS and the Pawsey Partner Scheme. 

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

Available core hours for 2022 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.

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:

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

Related pages

• NCMAS
• The Pawsey Partner Merit Allocation Scheme
• Allocation Schemes and Eligibility
• Accessing Pawsey Supercomputers