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How to Apply for ESM Computing Time

Eligible to apply for ESM resources are researchers from all HGF institutions (Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) in the research field Earth and Environment together with their national cooperation partners outside the HGF. Please see the fact sheet below for all relevant information concerning the application process:

 Fact sheet on applications for ESM computing time projects (PDF, 262 kB)

Regular computing time projects

Calls for proposals

Calls for regular computing time applications are published twice a year. The corresponding computing time periods have a duration of one year. These periods begin on 1 May and 1 November of each year respectively. The next call for proposals will open on 20 July 2020. The deadline for the next call (period from 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2021) will be on 17 August 2020, 17.00 CEST.

Apply here (open 20 July - 17 August 2020, 17:00 CEST)

Resources of the JUWELS ESM Partition

JUWELS Cluster Module

The JUWELS Cluster Module contains about 2500 compute nodes equipped with two Intel-Skylake Platinum 8168 CPUs with 24 cores each. These nodes are called CPU nodes. In addition, 56 so called GPU nodes are available each equipped with two Intel Xeon Gold 6148 CPUs with 20 cores each and additionally 4 NVIDIA Volta GPUs. The Cluster Module has a total peak performance of about 12 PFLOPS. About 60 million core hours (Mcore-h) on CPU nodes and about 1 Mcore-h on GPU nodes are available per ESM call.

JUWELS Booster Module

The JUWELS Booster Module is currently being installed and will be available in addition to the existing JUWELS Cluster Module for the first time with this call. The JUWELS Booster Module comprises 936 nodes each equipped with two AMD EPYC Rome 7402 CPUs with at least 512 GB DDR memory each and 4 NVIDIA Ampere A100 GPUs. With the Booster Module JUWELS computing power increases sevenfold compared to the JUWELS Cluster Module alone and provides a total of 87 PFLOPS to its users. About 11.5 Mcore-h on the JUWELS Booster node are available per ESM call.

Computing time requests: core hours and EFLOP

Computing time is provided on different modules and resources which can be requested within one computing time proposal. However, the effective computing power per core-hour differs for each resource. Thus, computing time requirements for more than one resource cannot be specified coherently by adding up core hours over the individual resources. To take this into account, computing time requirements expressed in units of Mcore-h for each requested resource will be converted to floating point operations in units of exaFLOP (EFLOP) based on the corresponding theoretical peak performance starting with this call. The project’s total requirement is given by adding up the requested computing time in EFLOP for all modules. In the electronic questionnaire, computing time requirements have to be specified per resource type either, as previously, in Mcore-h or in EFLOP. Both units will be converted into each other on the fly and displayed in due consideration of the requested resource types. Nonetheless, resources will be granted, allocated and accounted in core hours only for each resource type. Please see the  Fact sheet on applications for ESM computing time projects (PDF, 262 kB) for further information on this.

Guidelines for project applications for JUWELS

Applications are accepted online only. Applications via email will not be accepted. The call deadlines are strict deadlines, requests for applying after the call deadline will be rejected. Applications should be submitted in English. Please structure the project application in the following way:

Detailed description of the project
  • Outline of the scientific problem and your approach towards its solution (with references)
  • Description of previous work in this field, exploratory studies including the experience and results obtained (with references)
  • Statement of the scientific goals of the research project
  • Description of the physical and mathematical methods employed in the project, including numerical algorithms
  • Detailed schedule of the project (please give a clearly arranged work schedule using a table and/or Gantt chart), in the case of an extension of the project, please give details about any changes of your plans.
  • Preliminary studies that show good scaling behaviour of the programs under production conditions (i.e. typical parameter sets and problem sizes of the planned project, including I/O).
  • A detailed description of the I/O behaviour of the application (amount and size of files generated during typical runs, I/O strategy used (MPI I/O, netCDF, HDF5, SIONlib, etc.) and an estimate of the storage requirements during the project (scratch disk space needed, amount of data which needs to be transferred during the project to and from the system).
  • In case this is a continuation of a previous project, we ask you to describe mainly the changes in the project from the previous year's application and to upload the previous application as supplementary material.
  • Please follow the Template for a Project Description with respect to form, content and size. Applications that do not use the required templates for the project description might be rejected.

Templates for the project proposal

 Template for the project proposal (PDF, 300 kB)
 Template for the project proposal (docx, 239 kB)
 Template for the project proposal (FileTypex-tar, 408 kB)

The project description has to be uploaded via the application link as PDF file, the description must not exceed 18 DIN A4 pages (font 12pt) and 60 MB. Please do not include any supporting material in the project description. If you wish to add supporting or supplemental material to the project description, please collect that in a separate PDF file.

Finally, please sign the application form and the PI agreement and send it preferably by e-mail or to the Coordination Office for the Allocation of Computing Time at JSC (address see below).

Reporting obligations

On-going projects

Status report
This report must be submitted when applying for a continuation or extension of a project. The status report must not exceed 10 DIN A4 pages (font 12pt) and must be uploaded together with the application for a project extension/continuation as a separate file. For details about form and content of the report, please see below.

Completed projects

Final report
This report must not exceed 18 DIN A4 pages (font 12pt) and is due four weeks after the end of the last allocation period of the project. It should focus on the scientific and technical outcome of the project. Moreover, it should explain, how the granted computing time was spend within the project. The final report has to be uploaded here. For details about form and content of the report, please see below.

Form and content of reports

The reports should contain the following information:

  • The concrete results which were obtained in the last computing period. For final reports please include a short summary of the most important findings and results obtained in the entire project.
  • Statements about the use of the computer in your project with respect to performance, scaling behaviour, main storage requirements and disk storage requirements.
  • Articles which were published in peer reviewed journals (no conference contributions or posters) containing results of the project and include the proper acknowledgement (see below).
  • Ph.D. theses which were completed within the project (please give name of the author and the subject of the thesis).
  • Attractive colour pictures which were created in your project to present your results and which can be interesting for a general public. We would like to ask your permission to use these pictures in publications in the context of GCS, NIC or JSC.

It is mandatory to use the templates for reports provided below. Not doing so might lead to delay or even rejection of proposals.

Templates for the status report/final report

 Template for the Status/Final Report (PDF, 55 kB)
 Template for the Status/Final Report (docx, 25 kB)
 Template for the Status/Final Report as a Tex file (FileTypex-tar, 26 kB)

Test and preparatory access

Application for resources

Access to the ESM partition of JUWELS for testing and code porting purposes as well as for preparing applications for a regular computing time project is possible at any time (rolling call). Please contact Prof. Dr. Stefan Kollet (s.kollet@fz-juelich.de) or the coordination office for computing time (coordination-office@fz-juelich.de) for further information about the application procedure.

Reporting obligations

Reports have to be provided at least once a year. Please use the templates for status/final reports for regular computing time projects and follow the hints concerning form and content (see above). Please send your reports to Prof. Dr. Stefan Kollet (s.kollet@fz-juelich.de).

Acknowledge ESM computing time projects

Please use the following acknowledgement in your publications:

"The authors gratefully acknowledge the Earth System Modelling Project (ESM) for funding this work by providing computing time on the ESM partition of the supercomputer JUWELS at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)."

Address of the coordination office

Coordination Office for the Allocation of Computing Time
Jülich Supercomputing Centre
Forschungszentrum Jülich
52425 Jülich
Germany

E-Mail: coordination-office@fz-juelich.de

Last updated: 15 Jul 2020

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