Faculty Resources
Allocation Policy:
The Fulton HPC systems have a great deal of capacity, but CPU and Storage resources *are* limited. Nearly 300 users share the systems now. So there must be policies to allocate resources. The basic unit of CPU resources is the CPU-Hour (normalized to a nominal 2.5Ghz CPU with 1GB of memory).
There are three tiers of allocations for CPU time:
- Base or General Allocations
- Committee Allocations
- Purchased allocations
Base Allocations are given to all ASU researchers who apply. For the 2009 fiscal year, the base allocation is 10,000 CPU-hours for Fulton School researchers (and other participating units)and 5,000 CPU-hours for all other ASU researchers. Allocations are tracked by principal investigator (i.e., a faculty members usage includes all of their graduate students and postdocs). A base allocation includes 10GB of home directory storage space. Committee Allocations are granted through a proposal process to a faculty committee.
In FY10, the committee will allocate approximately 2 million CPU-hours. Requests can be for up to 200,000 additional hours beyond the base allocation. The committee judges allocation requests based on the research merit, the sponsored research supported, the potential for new research to be developed, and results from past allocations. Purchased Allocations are additional CPU time a faculty member acquires through grants or charges. Purchases can take the form of direct charges for cycles or through contributions of hardware (there is flexibility in the type of charge to support most agency grant programs).
HPCI staff are happy to work with faculty to incorporate the most appropriate mechanism in research proposals. The rate for direct cycle charge for FY10 is $0.025 per CPU-hour.
Storage is also available on a leased basis. Archive storage is available for a one-time charge of $1,500 perTerabyte for a 5 year period. High speed scratch storage or additional home directory space is also available.
Access to larger memory: Some jobs require larger amounts of memory than 1GB per processor. Larger memory amounts are available, but are deducted at a higher rate against the user’s allocations. Jobs requesting 2GB of memory per processor are charged at a 50% premium (1.5 CPU hours charged per actual hour used). A limited subset of nodes can support even larger memory…when these nodes are available, jobs may request up to 8GB/CPU at an additional 10% premium per GB above 2 (e.g., 4GB per CPU is charged at 1.7x the normal rate, 6GB per CPU at 1.9x).
Allocation Proposal Information:
Allocations of CPU time on HPCI computer systems are made via the Fulton HPCI Faculty Allocation Committee. Users may request time for up to 1 year. Committee allocations are made above and beyond the requestor's base allocation. Approximately 2 million CPU-hours will be available for allocation. Refer to HPCI's current allocation policy for more information.
Next Due Date: May 18, 2010. Early submissions may be considered for early awards.
Eligibility: All ASU faculty (including research scientists) on all campuses are eligible. Preference will be given to faculty in the Fulton School of Engineering and the Biodesign Institute.
Review Criteria: The committee judges allocation requests based on the research merit, the sponsored research supported, the potential for new research to be developed, and results from past allocations.
Request Size: Users may request up to 200,000 CPU hours for the year.
Proposal Format: The proposal should be at most 2 pages, and contain the following sections:
1. Name, position, department, and e-mail address of requester.
2. Size of allocation requested
3. A brief summary of the research to be performed using the HPCI systems, including a justification that HPC capacity is required
4. Results from previous allocations (if applicable).
5. A listing of any sponsored projects the allocation will support (if any)
6. A brief description of any potential sponsored projects research resulting from this allocation could facilitate.
7. A list of any publications resulting from previous HPC allocations (not counted in 2 page max)
8. A list of any proposals resulting from previous HPC allocations (not counted in 2 page max).
In-kind support: For external proposal purposes, a 100,000 hour allocation can be considered as $20,000 of in-kind support from ASU. Submission: Proposals should be submitted via e-mail in PDF, text, or Word format by midnight of the due date to hpc@asu.edu. Users will receive an e-mail confirming a receipt within 24 hours of submission.
