ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC): Call Open for 2022–2023 Allocation Year

November 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) is now accepting allocation proposals for projects of interest to DOE for the 2022-2023 allocation year. Proposals should emphasize high-risk, high-payoff scientific campaigns that are enabled via high-performance computing (HPC) 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. The ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) allocation program is open to scientists in industry, academia, and at national laboratories.

The ALCC program provides access to computational resources at ASCR’s three supercomputing facilities, which represent some of the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputers. Specific HPC platforms include Summit, the 200-petaflop IBM AC922 at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Theta, the 12-petaflop Cray XC40 machine; and Polaris, a new 44-petaflop accelerated system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL); and Perlmutter, a new accelerated system at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). In addition, limited access may be given to the exacscale Frontier system at ORNL. Up to thirty percent of the allocatable computing time will be made available through ALCC.

New this year, any pre-proposal or proposal that requests more than 25% of the available resources will be deemed non-responsive and will not be reviewed, and on January 30, 2023, a percentage of unused allocation hours will be returned to the ALCC program for redistribution to other projects. Proposals requiring more than 25% of the available resources should consider applying to ASCR’s INCITE program.

Scientific discoveries advanced by ALCC allocations range across DOE mission space such as energy efficient engineering, computer science, materials and chemical sciences, geosciences and energy-related biosciences, biological and environmental sciences, computational fluid dynamics, high-energy and nuclear physics, cosmology, design and control of scientific user facilities and experiments at these facilities, nuclear energy, fossil energy, and renewable energy. For a list of 2021-2022 awarded projects see Current Awards. For awards from previous years see Past Awards.

Pre-Proposals (Required) Due:  December 17, 2021

Pre-Proposal Response Date:  January 10, 2022

Full Proposals Due:  February 22, 2022

Allocation Cycle:  July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023

Please see the announcement for additional details.