Computing Resources on the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility

Support to enable members of the STFC theory community to access High Performance Computing (HPC) resources for research in particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology, solar system physics and particle astrophysics.

The Computing Resources on the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility call is run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to enable members of the STFC theory community to conduct research through access to computing resources. Research must address the STFC Science Challenges in areas including particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology, solar system physics and particle astrophysics.

The Distributed Research Utilising Advanced Computing (DiRAC) High Performance Computing (HPC) facility is the STFC national HPC resource for the UK theory and modelling communities in particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology, solar system physics and particle astrophysics. The DiRAC Resource Allocation Committee (RAC) was established to oversee the allocation of computing resources for DiRAC project proposals. This is the sixteenth opportunity (RAC16).

DiRAC offers computing resources on the following systems:

• Data Intensive Service at Cambridge.
• Data Intensive Service at Leicester.
• Extreme Scaling Service at Edinburgh.
• Memory Intensive Service at Durham.

RAC accepts the following proposal types:

• Short proposals – A self-contained research project typically lasting three to six months, or up to a maximum of 12 months. This is for proposals intending to develop exploratory study by users new to HPC or DiRAC.
• Thematic proposals (up to three years) – A clearly defined research programme of outstanding scientific merit which requires significant HPC resources over a period longer than 12 months and up to 36 months. The proposed research should be world-leading, with the expectation of making step changes in knowledge by using DiRAC resources. Thematic projects must be centred on a singular scientific theme, but can contain a small number of sub-projects and activities as long as they are clearly linked and are within the same scientific theme, rather than a collection of different projects across multiple scientific themes.
• Research software engineer (RSE) support for three months or more (submitted directly to DiRAC).

Discretionary and seedcorn proposals can be submitted (directly to DiRAC) at any time and these allocations can start at any time.