Gain access to ALCF resources
To gain access to ALCF resources, the facility offers a handful of allocation award programs through DOE that connect researchers to resources and support.
Director’s Discretionary
The Director’s Discretionary (DD) program provides “start up” awards to researchers working to achieve computational readiness for a major allocation award. DD projects allow users to improve application performance to maximize scientific application efficiency and productivity on the ALCF’s leadership computing platforms. This program is geared toward users who are new to the world of high-performance computing (HPC) research and/or new to ALCF.
Learn more about the Director's Discretionary Program here >
APEX
The AI Program for EXploration (APEX) is a collaborative allocation program designed to fast-track novel applications of AI in science. This program seeks proposals that apply AI methods in new, creative, or unconventional ways within their domain, such as introducing new AI methods or bringing established AI techniques into new scientific domains. This program is geared toward users who are new to the world of HPC.
NAIRR Pilot
The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot aims to connect U.S. researchers and educators to computational, data, and training resources needed to advance AI research and research that employs AI. Federal agencies are collaborating with government-supported and non-governmental partners to implement the Pilot as a preparatory step toward an eventual full NAIRR implementation.
The purpose of the NAIRR Pilot is to demonstrate the NAIRR concept and advance its main goals, namely to spur innovation, increase the diversity of talent, improve capacity, and advance safe, secure, and trustworthy AI in research and society. The NAIRR Pilot aims to address researcher needs by increasing access to a diverse ensemble of AI-related infrastructure resources, including computational capabilities, AI-ready datasets, pre-trained models, software systems, and platforms.
The ALCF contributes its ALCF AI Testbed and Introduction to AI for Science training program to this shared national research infrastructure.
Learn more about the NAIRR Pilot here >
ALCC
The ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) program supports efforts to further DOE mission science and to broaden community access to leadership computing facilities. This program allocates computational resources at three DOE supercomputing facilities, including ALCF, to support projects with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission.
Learn more about the ALCC program here.
INCITE
The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program is the principal means by which the scientific community gains access to DOE's leadership-class supercomputers at the ALCF and OLCF. The INCITE program aims to accelerate scientific discoveries and technological innovations by awarding, on a competitive basis, time on supercomputers to researchers with large-scale, computationally intensive projects that address “grand challenges” in science and engineering.