Large Compute applications (NWO)

This call concerns large applications of:

• More than 1,000,000 SBU on supercomputer Snellius (CPU and/or GPU) and/or more than 10 TB project space and/or more than 50 TB Data Archive (offline tape storage);
   
• More than 500,000 CPU core-hours and/or 14,000 GPU hours of cluster computing and/or more than 100,000 TB-hours project space storage on the LUMI pre-exascale supercomputer;
   
• More than 1,000,000 CPU core hours or 10,000 GPU hours Data Processing (Grid and/or Spider) and/or more than 200 TB of online data storage and/or more than 300 TB of Grid storage - tape (offline tape storage);
   
• More than 100,000 CPU core hours on Cloud Research Consultancy and/or more than 2 TB of online storage;
   
• More than 50,000 CPU core hours or 5,000 GPU hours on HPC Cloud (via SURF Research Cloud) and/or more than 2 TB of online storage.

Professors, assistant professors, associate professors and other researchers with a similar position* may submit an application if they are in permanent employment (and therefore have a paid employment contract for an indefinite period) or have a tenure track agreement with one of the following organisations:

• Universities located in the Kingdom of the Netherlands;
• University medical centers;
• KNAW- en NWO-instituten;
• Universities of applied sciences, as referred to in Article 1.8 of the Higher Education and Research Act (WHW)
• the Netherlands Cancer Institute;
• the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen;
• NCB Naturalis;
• Advanced Research Centre for NanoLithography (ARCNL);
• Prinses Maxima Centrum

Researchers from the following institutions may submit an application, provided that the institution meets the cumulative criteria described below:

• The TO2 federation (Deltares, Marin, NLR, TNO and WUR/DLO);
• IHE Delft Institute for Water Education;
• The institutions participating in SURF Cooperative: KNMI, RIVM, National Archives, National Archives, National Library of the Netherlands, University of Humanistic Studies, Police Academy, IKNL.

In this case, the organisation in question:​​​​​​

• Is based in the Netherlands;
• Has a public task and is independent in the conduct of research;
• Receives at least 50% public funding;
• Has no profit motive other than for the purpose of conducting further research.

*A comparable position is understood to mean that a researcher demonstrably has a comparable number of years of experience in conducting scientific research and supervising other researchers as a professor or associate professor.

Both researchers with a permanent contract and with a temporary contract can submit an application as the main applicant. Additional conditions apply to researchers with a temporary contract.

For both Small Compute Applications (NWO) and Large Compute Applications (NWO), the total capacity available is as follows:

• Supercomputer: 1805 million SBU on Snellius (1286 million SBU CPU thin nodes, 325 million SBU GPU nodes, 185 million SBU CPU fat nodes, 9 million SBU CPU high-memory nodes), with 9,896 TB of Snellius project space and 15,000 TB of Data Archive (offline tape storage).
   
• LUMI pre-exascale supercomputer: 22.241 million CPU core-hours, 1.408 million GPU hours and 10.130 million TB-hours of project space storage.
   
• Data Processing (Grid and/or Spider): 141.50 million CPU core hours and 0.3 million GPU hours, with 28,712 TB of online storage and 13,000 TB of Grid storage - tape (offline tape storage).
   
• HPC Cloud (via SURF Research Cloud): 26.28 million CPU core hours and 1.33 million GPU hours, with 700 TB of online storage.
   
• Cloud Research Consultancy: 5.2 million CPU core hours, with 263 TB of online storage.
   
• 200 TB storage Research Drive.

Access to LUMI is best suited for projects that require computations at an extreme scale, specifically GPU accelerated workloads on tens to hundreds of GPUs. You can apply for LUMI access if your project requires computations at such scale, or if it targets other LUMI-specific hardware. 

A LUMI-regular application should be preceded by a LUMI pilot or another LUMI project to make sure that your code runs successfully on AMD hardware and scales well to large numbers of GPUs.

Several universities also offer high performance computing facilities with powerful servers on which researchers, PhDs and students connected to their university can interactively work on data and run computations. These are particularly of interest if you need relatively small amounts of capacity, or if you need HPC capacity for educational purposes.  See the high performance compute facilities at universities page for a complete overview.  

Also some institutions purchase capacity directly from SURF, which their researchers and students can use. See the direct access to compute services page for an overview.

For Large Compute applications (NWO) there are no limitations.

It is not possible to raise the requested capacity for an awarded Large Compute application(NWO). A new application will need to be done.

Applicants with a permanent contract can sign their application themselves. Applicants with a temporary employment contract must have the application digitally signed by a responsible scientific supervisor with a permanent appointment. With this, the supervisor declares to guarantee the justification of allocated computing time, storage and support. This scientific supervisor may act as guarantor for several applicants.

Large Compute applications are typically reviewed and approved within 2-3 months. However, applicants get preliminary access to the systems several weeks after applying.

Yes, on the NWO website. NWO publishes all granted Large compute applications (NWO) via news items. At the bottom of these announcements there is an appendix with all Small compute applications (NWO) via SURF.

We advise you to always consult a SURF advisor to discuss and submit a large application. Please create a ticket on our Servicedesk portal and we will get in touch.

Yes, a one-time extension of max 12 months is possible. 

For LUMI a one-time extension of 3 months is possible.

Please create a ticket on our Servicedesk portal and we will get in touch.

There is more detailed information available on the website of NWO: Computing Time on National Computer Facilities and in the call text.