Pre-proposal Submission Information

The ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) is an allocation program for projects of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE), with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff HPC simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission, that respond to national emergencies, or that broaden the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources.

ALCC is currently soliciting proposals for allocation awards for the 2025-2026 allocation year. High performance computing (HPC) machines available for the current allocation cycle include Frontier, the new exascale system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF);  Aurora, the new exascale system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF); Polaris, the 44-petaflop accelerated system at ALCF; and Perlmutter, an accelerated system at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. 10% to 30% of the allocatable computing time will be made available on each of these machines to the ALCC program.

To ensure equitable distribution of projects, please note that projects that request more the allocation request limit of any given resource will be deemed non-responsive and will not be reviewed. Please contact the ALCC program manager ([email protected]) if you have any questions regarding the allocation request for your proposed project allocation size.

Pre-Proposal Submission Instructions

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the ALCC submission site.

Electronic applications will be accepted starting Monday, October 7, 2024, through 8:00 pm EDT on Monday, November 11, 2024. 

Pre-Proposal Contents

  1. Pre-Proposal Title

The title will not be editable after submission of the Pre-Proposal.

  1. Team and Contacts

Primary PI, Co-PIs, and Collaborators

  1. HPC Resource Request

    1. Machine and hours request.
      1. Proposals that request more than the allocation request limit for any of the available resources will be considered nonresponsive and may not undergo merit review, and pre-proposals with such large requests may be declined.
      2. Proposals requesting time on Frontier, Aurora, Polaris or Perlmutter-GPU that do not use the GPUs will be considered nonresponsive.
      3. Number entered will be processed as x 10^6. This should be the physical node-hours on the requested machine, NOT multiplied by any site charging factor.
    2. Code description (or link to project code) along with description of planned production runs, number of nodes per run, expected wall-clock time required, and how benchmarking was determined.
    3. Additional comments or considerations

  1. Previous Allocation History

    1. Is this application a renewal of a current ALCC allocation?
    2. Has the PI or any Co-PIs received any allocations for ASCR resources in support of this project or any previous project?
    3. Do you currently have or have had any other high performance computing allocations in support of this project?

  1. Security Questionnaire

    1. Proprietary Information
    2. Export Control
    3. Privacy Information

  1. Project Support

ALCC grants computer time, but NOT funding. All proposals MUST have funding from a recognized source (Lab, University, Industry, Federal Agency, etc.).  NOTE: ALCC applications will be considered nonresponsive and may not undergo merit review, and pre-proposals may be declined, if they do not list their project support. 

  1. Prohibited Reviewers

List any persons/affiliations that the PI requests we NOT use as reviewers for this proposal.

  1. Executive Summary

PDF document (template) containing an Executive Summary for your proposal (1 page maximum). State what the project intends to do and what methods will be used. Be sure to include:

  • Science domain and planned theoretical/computational method(s)
  • Connection(s) to DOE mission, expanding HPC community, and/or connection to other projects (like an upcoming physical experiment).
  • Information about expanding the usage base of HPC (e.g., Professors Smith and Jones will be supervising grad students and developing course materials on application of HPC to new nuclear physics equations, to be shared with other universities).
  • Identify what makes this project special (e.g., this will be the first-time numerical methods have been applied to this problem; the results will be used in design of a new detector).

Pre-Proposal Evaluation

Pre-proposals are internally reviewed by DOE Program Mangers to determine scientific merit and responsiveness to the DOE mission. HPC resource requests are evaluated by the ASCR computing facilities to determine the project’s suitability for the requested resource(s) including:

  • The basis for amount of requested resources
  • The ability of the proposed work to make use of the specific architectural features of the targeted HPC systems efficiently and effectively
  • The ability to carry out that work within the scheduling and use policies of the corresponding ASCR facility.

Questions about can be directed to: [email protected]

Pre-proposal responsiveness decisions will be communicated on Monday, December 16, 2024.