Letter of Intent Submission deadline: April 30th, 2024
Full proposal Submission deadline: June 10th, 2024
1. Aim of the call
In this call, PASC is seeking proposals for software development projects that address the broad availability, the quality, and performance of software on GPU-accelerated supercomputing platforms. These projects can focus on simulation or data analysis using approaches from computational science or the machine learning field. Projects must lead to application software that is related to important scientific problems that require high-end GPU-accelerated supercomputers to be solved. The projects must present the science case that motivates the work and that would merit Tier-0 resources, or alternatively document the expected impact of the project on the user community as a whole at CSCS. Separately securing grants/resources on Tier-0 systems to tackle the science case in the course of the project is an important measure of success.
2. Eligibility requirements
Researchers with tenured positions at Swiss universities and institutes of the ETH Domain are eligible to submit PASC projects as principal investigators (PI). SNSF rules for personnel eligibility apply. Researchers from other institutions, including private companies and universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen), as well as non-Swiss universities and research institutes are eligible to participate in HPC software development projects. Typically, investigators from private companies or non-Swiss institutions bear their own cost; the PASC Steering Committee may approve exceptions in justified cases.
3. Financial scope and duration
Projects will start on January 1st 2025 and can plan for at most three years of development. As a result of a mandatory review in year 3, an extension of the project by one year will be granted to those projects that are favourably reviewed on both past performance and an extension proposal. All projects must be concluded by December 31st 2027 (no extension) or December 31st 2028 (with extension). PASC expects to support 10 - 15 projects. Typical budget of the PASC-supported portion of an HPC software development project is expected to be in the range of CHF 350 to 550 thousand for 3 years; larger budgets of the PASC-supported portion will have to be well justified. Following federal regulations, each project team receiving PASC-funds will have to provide matching funds. These can be in-kind and must be at least equal in value to funds requested from PASC. It is encouraged that PIs acquire additional funds in support of their HPC software development projects..
4. Deadline
A letter, in which the intent for submitting a project proposal is expressed, should be submitted in PDF format to paola.colferai@cscs.ch at the latest by April 30th 2024.
Complete project proposals must be submitted before midnight Central European Time on June 10th 2024 in PDF format via e-mail to paola.colferai@cscs.ch.
5. Evaluation procedure
Submitted proposals will first be subject to eligibility check by the project office. Eligible proposals will subsequently be evaluated by external peers and ranked by the PASC Scientific Advisory Board.
Final decision on funding will be adopted by the PASC Steering Committee upon proposition of the PASC Program Director. Final decision is expected in November 2024.