Search site:

Home	Notices and News	Accounts	Facilities, Software and Userguides	Frequently Asked Questions	Training	Annual Reports

THE APAC MERIT ALLOCATION SCHEME

APAC has established a National Facility to provide substantially more computational capability than that available at other facilities in Australia. Further details on APAC and the National Facility can be found at http://www.nci.org.au/ and http://nf.apac.edu.au/.

The APAC Merit Allocation Scheme has been established to allow researchers to access to the APAC National Facility based on merit. A substantial proportion of the computational resources at the National Facility are available for distribution under this Scheme by a Merit Allocation Committee.

The Merit Allocation Scheme is intended to support computationally-intensive projects that are difficult or impossible to conduct using Institutional or other facilities.

Applications

The main call for applications to the Merit Allocation Scheme is made annually in October for allocations to start the following January. Allocations are made for up to 12 months at a time. There is also a mid-term call in April for NEW projects for the July to December period. This is to bring such new applicants in line with the main call.

Applications may be submitted at any time when there are reasons for not being able to submit at the time of the calls. Such applications may ask for resources for a period of less than a year to bring the project into line with the normal January allocation round.

Details and forms to apply for allocations can be found here.

Who May Apply

Subject to the conditions of use any staff member of an Australian Higher Education Institution or CSIRO Researcher may apply to the Merit Allocation Scheme. Postgraduate students should apply through their supervisors. Successful applicants and their project team members are eligible to use the allocations awarded by the Merit Allocation Committee.

The Merit Allocation committee has a policy of one project per Principal Investigator. However it is possible for the principal investigator to be connected to other researchers' projects as well as having their own project.

Resources are also available to industrial users for technology diffusion purposes and those interested should contact APAC.

The Merit Allocation Committee

A Merit Allocation Committee has been established by the APAC Board to determine the Principal Investigators and projects which will be granted access under this Scheme. The membership of the Merit Allocation Committee is given here.

The Merit Allocation Committee assess the applications according to the criteria given in here.

National and international referees may be contacted by the Merit Allocation Committee. Applicants may nominate referees but the choice of referees is at the discretion of the Merit Allocation Committee. Applicants may also nominate persons that should not be contacted.

A representative of the National Facility will also attend Merit Allocation Committee meetings (without voting rights) to advise the Merit Allocation Committee on technical matters.

Resources Available at the APAC National Facility

The National Facility aims to provide a world-class peak computing system accessible to researchers anywhere in Australia.

Allocations are made in Service Units which reflect both the time used and the priority at which it is used. For normal use, a Service Unit (SU) corresponds to one hour of elapsed time on one processor of the system at "normal" priority. Resources used at a higher priority consume more Service Units than those used at normal priority.

The Merit Allocation Committee makes substantial allocations of resources on the peak computing system. Typical annual allocations are around 50,000 processor hours and projects requiring substantially more resources may be supported. Projects which require more modest resources are also supported, but these typically require access to special capabilities of the National Facility systems (eg. software, large memory, fast turnaround). It is expected that most projects will make substantial use of the systems in parallel mode, using programming models such as MPI and OpenMP.

There will be no charge for use of computational resources allocated by the Merit Allocation Committee. Projects will also receive a grant of space on the mass data storage system at the National Facility. Usage beyond this quota may incur a charge.

The National Facility has a budget to install system, application software and datasets that are commonly used by the research community. Users may be required to contribute funds to install software that is required by only a small number of users. Suggestions for acquisition of additional software may be made by users on the appropriate form. Note that the allocation of computer time by the Merit Allocation Committee does not imply that APAC will necessarily acquire any software requested for that project.

Users are expected to access the National Facility via AARNet. The National Facility will cover the AARNet charges that it incurs, but users must pay for any communications charges billed directly to them from AARNet and any other communications organisations.

Users will also have access to assistance from the professional staff of the National Facility and usage of visualization facilities at the ANU when visiting the National Facility. The extent of this support will be determined on the basis of need and priorities.

Project Start-Up Grants

Small Start-up Grants are available to enable researchers to gain sufficient experience of the National Facility to evaluate its suitability for their research projects and to help in framing a proposal to the Merit Allocation Scheme.

Start-up Grants are readily available at any time. Requests can be made directly to the National Facility on a simple form available from here and will not be considered by the Merit Allocation Committee. A detailed justification of the research project is not required.

Note: Start-up grants are short-term (3 months) and cannot be renewed. For longer-term small grants, please submit a Partner application instead.

The National Facility may use its discretion to reject or limit a request after discussion with the applicant. If applicants disagree with such decisions, they may submit an application to the Merit Allocation Scheme or to the appropriate APAC Partner.

Conditions of Use of the National Facility

APAC will issue a statement of offer to successful applicants. The offer will indicate the level of resources awarded by the Merit Allocation Committee and the conditions under which these resources can be used.

Researchers should be aware that the allocations awarded are entitlements to a resource share. In order to make effective use of the National Facility, procedures will be developed to allow some flexibility to use these resources over a period of time. Currently allocations are split into (up to) four quarterly sub-allocations. Allocations unused at the end of a quarter are lost, though consideration will be given to carrying unused allocations forward and adjusting quarterly allocations in some circumstances.

Applicants must obtain approval from an authorised delegate of their employer to indicate that resources at the employer's institution are available to support the application.

Successful applicants will be required to provide reports on their use of the National Facility.

All applicants must acknowledge that they and project team members will abide by the acceptable use policy for the National Facility.

Disclaimer

While every effort will be made to fully support projects granted allocations, as a result of scheduling, networking and other capacity issues, APAC cannot guarantee that the allocations can be fully utilised.

APAC Web-site: http://www.nci.org.au/

APAC National Facility Web-site: http://nf.apac.edu.au/