Astronomy Supercomputer Time Allocation Committee

Allocation of time on Australian supercomputing resources - call for proposals

ASTAC has issued a call for proposals for Quarters 3-4 (1st July - 20th December 2012). The call closes at 5pm (AEDT) Friday 8th June 2012. Details can be found in the announcement flier.

Further information for the various programs can be found through the following links:

NCI

• NCI Supercomputer hardware

• Additional information about the facility and available software

gSTAR/swinSTAR

• Swinburne HPC

iVEC

• Epic Supercomputer

• Fornax Supercomputer

The next call for proposals for time in 2013 on SwinSTAR/gSTAR will be around December 2012.

Please note that additional access to HPC facilities for astronomy and astrophysics at both NCI and iVEC is available through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme, and through dedicated shares for the organisational partners of both NCI and iVEC.

Astronomy Supercomputer Time Allocation Committee

Terms of Reference

The Astronomy Supercomputer Time Allocation Committee (ASTAC) is a committee of Astronomy Australia Ltd (AAL). The purpose of ASTAC is to allocate time on the following supercomputer resources which have dedicated national astronomy access:

• gSTAR (75% of time available: 50% of this time via grand plan proposals)
• Swinburne Supercomputer (one million core-hours available in 2012)
• NCI (one million core-hours available in 2012 as per NCI guidelines)
• iVEC (time available on Epic and Fornax)

Note: AAL will consider ASTAC allocating time on any other supercomputer resources that have dedicated national astronomy access, where appropriate.

ASTAC's allocation principles can be found here.

Membership

• Members of ASTAC are appointed by the AAL Board for a fixed term, with the possibility of renewal.

Composition

• NCI Director - Lindsay Botten (ex-officio)
• Swinburne Supercomputer Manager - Jarrod Hurley (ex-officio)
• Geoff Bicknell (Chair), Australian National University, until 31 December 2012
• John Lattanzio, Monash University, until 31 December 2013
• Geraint Lewis, University of Sydney, until 31 December 2013

Advisors

• NCI user consultant (Jon Smillie)
• Swinburne supercomputer user consultant (Luke Hodkinson)