Please submit the complete project proposal for a compute project to the HLRN service at NHR@ZIB via the JARDS portal. A project proposal contains four parts which are described in the sections below.

1. meta data ("Stammdaten"),
2. main proposal("Projektbeschreibung"/initial application or "Statusbericht"/status report),
3. abstract ("Kurzbeschreibung"),  and
4. a signed letter (e-mail) 
5. public abstract
6. signed proposal summary

After submission, the proposal is evaluated in a review process organized reviewed by the HLRN external Scientific Board. Each reviewer obtains access to

• the project proposal,

• the history of previous projects,

• contact data of the HLRN consultant, and
• aggregated statistics for NPL usage of computung time on the HLRN NHR systems.

Anker
Stammdaten Stammdaten

Meta

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Data

During the course of online submission, the project proposer needs to address metadata on the HLRN service portalprovide some metadata. This includes information about

• the principal investigator (scientist holding a PhD),
• the person in charge of submitting the proposal,
• project partners,
• other evaluations and funding for the project,
• usage of other compute resources,
• project lifetime,
• software requirements (please check availability with your consultant before),
• compute time requirementsrequirements in units core hour (at least 300 k core hour per quarter, see Application Guide), and
• storage requirements.

Anker
Projektbeschreibung Projektbeschreibung

Main

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Erstantrag für ein Großprojekt/ Initial application for a compute project

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Proposal

The main proposal

• needs to be uploaded as a prepared document in PDF format,

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• is written in English

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• ,

• should be written in LaTeX based on the main_proposal_template_v1.5.zip. This template includes all relevant aspects like

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• Abstract 
• Project description
  • Problem description and aims of the project
  • Scientific significance, innovation, expected results, utilization of results
  • Mathematical modeling used, 
  • Technology and tools for numerical solution 

  • Preliminary studies/results of the preceding project 

  • Descriptions of research plan and work packages
• Computational facets
  • Software, libraries, licenses, target architecture (a list)
  • Necessity of parallel computing hardware
  • Concept for parallelization, scaling properties, application performance
  • Parallel efficiency, strong/weak scaling
  • Performance properties, precondition for estimations in the resource plan
  • Necessity of HLRN resource, larger than e.g. university
• Resource estimation
  • Detailed plan for compute time and NPL (see Accounting and NPL)
  • work plan 
  • Storage demands, scaling properties for I/O
• Literature
• Funding decisions
• Publication list

...

• project description, computational facets and resource estimation. The LaTeX template includes both proposal types: initial and follow-up.

We recommend to use the following layout (The here integrated PDF viewer hides elements - please download the PDFs.):

• Initial proposal: sample.pdf
• Follow-up proposal: sample.pdf

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WhitelistStatus WhitelistStatus

The LaTeX template / PDF samples internally differentiate between a normal and a short version in case of whitelist status.
Whitelist status is granted by the scientific review board under three conditions:

• 1^st, you apply for a NHR "Normal project" as described in our JARDS guide: Compute Project#guideandassistance. NHR "Large projects" are excluded from the whitelist.
• 2^nd,  you are part of an active project by the DFG, any German federal ministry (e.g. BMBF), EU (e.g. Horizon), or VolkswagenStiftung. The proposal corresponding to this project needs to describe HPC resource requirements and discuss numerical methods.
• 3^rd, as evidence, you need to upload the corresponding project proposal and its review report to the JARDS online portal. We keep it confidential. If an upload is not possible due to confidentiality requirements, whitelisting is unfortunately not possible. 

Please avoid:

• Imprecise or incomprehensible estimation of requested computational resources (especially NPL/ core-hours); for example, missing arguments to justify a certain number of N runs instead of a smaller number. One page is our recommended minimum.
• No proof, that the software to be used is suitable and efficient for parallel execution (and parallel I/O) on our specific supercomputercurrent HPC systems architecture. Recycling a scalability demo by a third party is meaningless, without showing that your planned production run is fully comparable to it (algorithm selection within the software, I/O pattern, machine architecture, problem size per core).
• The overall aim and/or motivation behind the project is unclear.
• The applicant lacks HPC/Unix skills and an experienced co-applicant is missing.
• Insufficiency of the applicant's local resources is not indicated.

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• .

In case of continuation of a running compute project ("Fortsetzungsantrag für ein Großprojekt"):

Instead of "Projektbeschreibung"/initial application, you need to submit a "Statusbericht"/status report of the current project.

The structure of the report might be similar to the initial application. "Statusbericht"/Status report should hold the following properties:

• Describe the current status of the project and the reasons for the continuation of the project.
• Since the referees have access to the initial application, it is reasonable to use references to the initial application instead of repeating descriptions
• Describe results, problems and future plans

1. • Current progress
   • Summary of the studies and results obtained in the preceding project
   • Publications from the initial application
   • New problems to be addressed in the continuation of the running project or problems not (fully) solved in the initial application and
     intended to be covered in the continuation of the running project
   • Differences from the initial application
   • Resource estimation
   • Detailed plan for compute time and NPL (see Accounting and NPL), work plan
   • Storage demands, scaling properties for I/O

To avoid:

Apart from the items mentioned for the initial application:

• The HLRN The NHR@ZIB computing center was not mentioned in relevant publications.Cut & paste of previous proposals.

In case of questions, please contact your HLRN consultant.

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Kurzbeschreibung Kurzbeschreibung

Public Abstract

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All present HLRN , compute projects that have been successfully reviewed by the Scientific Board are listed on the HLRN project list. Each proposal for a compute project needs to submit a Kurzbeschreibung / project public abstract in PDF format based on the HLRN public abstract template (English/German). It should be generally understandable.

The abstract is written in English or in German and should contain about 2 pages. View filenameHLRNAbstractTemplate.zipheight250If you have no project ID yet (in case of an initial proposal) simply keep the default: "abn12345".

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Signedletter Signedletter

Signed

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Proposal Summary

By the end of the online submission process, an email a summary is created by the HLRN service portalgenerated by JARDS which has to be signed and then either sent to the Office of the Scientific Board or reuploaded to JARDS. This also indicates that your application is successfully submitted. The project proposer is requested to print and sign the document and finally to send it to the Office of the Scientific Board.