Guides to Apply - NHR Normal or NHR Large - Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC2)

Step 3: Guide to Apply for NHR-Large or NHR-Normal

Double check the requirements for an NHR-Normal or NHR-Large Projects:

The principal investigator has to have a Ph.D degree (or equivalent) and must to be member of a German University (including Fachhochschulen and HAWs).
The required compute resource fit in the chosen category:
- NHR-Normal: less than 30 Mio. CPU-core-hours and less than 100.000 GPU-h per year, can be applied for and started at any time
- NHR-Large: more than 30 Mio. CPU-Core-hours or more than 100.000 GPU-h per year, four fixed call for proposals per year, possible project period starts at 1.1, 1.4, 1.7 or 1.10
- If you are unsure about your requirements please contact us via one of our support possibilities.

Check if one of the possible simplifications is viable for you

Multi-Year Projects

By default a project will run for one year. Multi-year projects are possible. If you apply for a multi-year project:

You have to submit a proposal only once.
The resource limits of normal and large projects apply on a yearly basis, i.e. a normal project is possible for up to 20 Mio. CPU-core hours per year and up to 100.000 GPU-hours per year.
It is assumed that the resources are the same for every year. If this is not the case please describe it in the detailed description and give the average resources in the online forms.
A short report on the progress is required till the end of every year. The template can be found at templates.

Simplification for Well-Known Codes

The following table lists simulation programs which are well known at PC2 and don't require a scaling analysis in the detailed project description. Still, a description of the specific methods used is required in the application for computing time to enable a technical review.

Please note that this list is continuously extended and updated. As of January 2024 the list includes:

Chemistry/solid-state-physics/atomistic simulations
Abinit	FHI-aims	GPAW	NAMD	Quantum Espresso
Amber	Fleur	ls1 mardyn	NWChem	Salmon
CP-PAW	Gamess	LAMMPS	Octopus	Turbomole
CP2K	GAUSSIAN	Lumen	ORCA	VASP
Dalton	Gromacs	ms2	Psi4	Yambo
Engineering
Abaqus	ANSYS CFX/Fluent	CST Microwave	OpenFOAM
Adams	Comsol	LS-Dyna	StarCCM
High-energy physics
SIMULATeQCD
FPGA Development Tools
Intel OneAPI FPGA Toolkit	OpenCL SDK for FPGAs	Vitis
Machine Learning
DeepSpeed	Jax	PyTorch	Tensorflow/Keras

(For NHR-Normal only) Already Scientifically Reviewed Projects

If your reserach project has already been reviewed scientifically by a German federal ministry (BMBF, BMWK, BMUV, BMEL,...), DFG, GCS, European Union (EU projects), Volkswagen Stiftung or another NHR center then the detailed description is drastically shorter.

If you choose to use this simplification, then the detailed project description is much shorter because the scientific aspects have already been reviewed anyway. The template can be found at templates.
The simplified review will shorten the time from the submission of your project proposal to the start of the project.
Please send us the the following information in addition to the simplified project description:
- the project proposal that was scientifically reviewed and tell us which sections are relevant. You are free to remove the aspects that are not relevant for the scientific description of the project, e.g. other work packages. Although no lengthy scientific review is required in this case, we still might have to inquire from external referees if the requested compute resources are suitable for this project because this aspect is often not explicitly reviewed. Thus, the project proposal you send us might be made available to the referees to get an idea which kind of calculations you plan to do.
- the project information like project name, project id and so on.
If unsure or unclear if this applies, please contact us.

To apply for a NHR-Large or NHR-Normal project at PC2 please follow the steps:

Fill out the detailed description template
- Template for already reviewed NHR-Normal projects (DOCX, TeX)
- Regular template for NHR-Large and NHR-Normal (DOCX, TeX)
Fill out the Proposal Form:
- For NHR-Normal Projects:
  - Login at the PC2-JARDS online proposal system with your university mail. You will get a mail with login information.
  - Then click the gray button "New normal-Project Application", respectively and fill out the forms. If you have any question please contact us via one of our support possibilities.
  - On the last page click "SUBMIT". A few minutes later, you will get a mail with the proposal as a pdf attached.
- For NHR-Large Projects:
  - Login at the NHR-JARDS online proposal system with your university mail. You will get a mail with login information.
  - Then click the gray button "New NHR Large Project Application" and fill out the forms. If you have any question please contact us via one of our support possibilities.
  - On the last page click "SUBMIT". A few minutes later, you will get a mail with the proposal as a pdf attached.
Sign the Proposal: The principal investigator (PI) and project administrator (PA) need to sign the pdf either by hand signature or electronically and send the signed document to pc2-support@uni-paderborn.de.
Wait for Further Steps:
- NHR-Normal Project:
  - In case the project has already been scientifically reviewed: Then the Ressource Allocation Board of PC2 will decide on the proposal typically withing 5 work days.
  - In case the project has NOT already been scientifically reviewed:
    - In case the acceptance of the project is likely, then the project will be preliminarily granted within a few work days and you can start using our systems with a restricted compute contingent.
    - Then your proposal will enter the external scientific review. This usually takes 4-6 weeks. If your project was successfully reviewed and accepted, the compute resources will, be incresed to the granted value.
- NHR-Large Project:
  - The offical start date of large projects, i.e., the start of project period are 1.1, 1.4, 1.7 or 1.10. The current start date is also listed in the Call for Proposals for Large Projects.
  - In case the acceptance of the project is likely, then the project will be preliminarily granted within a few work days and you can start using our systems with a restricted compute contingent before the official start of the project period.
  - Then your proposal will enter the external scientific review. This usually takes several weeks. If your project was successfully reviewed and accepted, the compute resources will, be incresed to the granted value.
Additional User Accounts: If you or a person that should use the projects resources don't have a user account at Paderborn University (aka. IMT account), then please request a user account.