Proposal Format

Please submit the complete project proposal for a compute project at the two NHR centers, NHR@ZIB and NHR@Göttingen, via JARDS. A project proposal contains four parts which are described in the sections below.

1. Metadata
2. Main Proposal
3. Public Abstract
4. Signed Proposal Summary

After submission, the proposal is reviewed by the external Scientific Board. Each reviewer obtains access to

• the project proposal,
• the history of previous projects,
• contact data of the consultant, and
• aggregated statistics for usage of computung time on the NHR systems.

Metadata

During the course of online submission, the project proposer needs to provide 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),
• requirements in units core hour (at least 1200 k core hour per year, see Accounting), and
• storage requirements.

Main Proposal

The main proposal

• needs to be uploaded as a prepared document in PDF format,
• is written in English,
• should be written in LaTeX or Word based on the respective NHR_templates.zip.

These templates include all relevant aspects like project description, computational facets and resource estimation. The LaTeX and Word subfolders contain both proposal types: initial and follow-up as well as whitelisting options.

We recommend to use the following layout:

• Without whitelisting
  • Initial proposal: new_proposal_with_hints.pdf
  • Follow-up proposal: extension_proposal_with_hints.pdf
• With whitelisting
  • Initial proposal: new_whitelisted_proposal_with_hints.pdf
  • Follow-up proposal: extension_whitelisted_proposal_with_hints.pdf

The LaTeX and Word templates (cf. the PDF samples) differentiate between a normal and a short version in case of whitelist status. For more details, have a look inside the respective template/samples.

Whitelisting

Whitelist status is granted by the scientific review board under two conditions:

• First, you apply for a “Normal project” with less than 5M core-hours per quarter (see Apply for a Compute Project).
• Secondly, you are part of an active DFG/BMBF/NHR/GCS or EU project, which explicitly describes HPC resource requirements. As evidence, you need to upload the corresponding project proposal and its review report to the online portal.

Please avoid:

• Imprecise or incomprehensible estimation of requested computational resources (especially 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.
• Missing proof that the software to be used is suitable and efficient for parallel execution (and parallel I/O) on our current 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).
• Unclear overall aim and/or motivation behind the project.
• Lacking HPC/Unix skills of the applicant, while an experienced co-applicant is missing.
• Missing indication of insufficiency of the applicant’s local resources.
• Not mentioning the NHR in relevant publications.
• Copying & pasting previous/parallel proposals; instead, please refer to them.

In case of questions, please contact your consultant.

Public Abstract

All present compute projects that have been successfully reviewed by the Scientific Board are listed on the project list. Each proposal for a compute project needs to submit a public abstract in PDF format based on the 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. If you have no project ID yet (in case of an initial proposal) simply keep the default: “abn12345”.

Signed Proposal Summary

By the end of the online submission process, a summary is generated 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.