Requesting an Allocation
To access a resource, Principal Investigators (PIs) must request an allocation. Faculty, professional research staff, and postdoctoral researchers may request PI eligibility for their account. PIs are responsible for requesting resource allocations and managing their team.
Browse the System List, Allocations, and Software List to help determine which resource and allocation fits your research.
All Systems
TACC’s High Performance Computing Resource Overview
Frontera: The fastest academic supercomputer in the world, providing computational capability that makes larger, more complex research challenges possible.
Stampede3: The newest strategic resource advancing NSF’s supercomputing ecosystem for the nation’s open science community.
Lonestar6: Supporting Texas researchers in providing simulation, data analysis, visualization, and AI/machine learning.
Jetstream2: A user-friendly, scalable cloud environment with reproducible, sharable computing on geographically isolated clouds.
Chameleon: Reconfigurable large-scale OpenStack cloud testbed for computer science and networking research.
Cyclone: Cloud infrastructure system that provides a platform for cloud-native applications and workflows.
Storage Systems
Corral: Storage and data management resource designed and optimized to support large-scale collections and a collaborative research environment.
Ranch: Long-term data archiving environment designed, implemented, and supported to provide storage for data sets of the TACC user community.
Stockyard: Global file system at the center of TACC’s system ecosystem that supports data-driven science by providing online storage of large datasets, and offers migration for further data management and archiving.
Allocation Opportunities
TACC offers three types of project allocations:
Startup: These projects aim to provide the PI with an initial allocation to build a case for a Research or Educational project. Startup projects usually receive small allocations with short durations. This allocation may be requested to gather benchmark data for a larger allocation request, or to test the suitability of the system for a particular research project.
Educational: Allocations for educational projects support academic classes, with limitations on allocation sizes and availability only on specific TACC resources.
Research: Allocations for research projects support the computational needs of the scientific community. Research project allocations begin on calendar quarters, are normally for one year, and must be renewed annually for multi-year projects. Requests for new research allocations and renewals must be submitted 30 days prior to the start of the allocation period. Requests submitted after the due date will be considered for the next allocation period. PIs can apply for startup project allocations until the next research project quarterly deadline.
Allocation Period |
New/Renewal Request Due |
|---|---|
January 1 - Dec 31 |
December 1 |
April 1 - March 31 |
March 1 |
July 1 - June 30 |
June 1 |
October 1 - September 31 |
September 1 |
System |
Startup SUs |
Educational SUs |
Research SUs |
|---|---|---|---|
Lonestar6 |
500 |
500 |
Up to 100,000 |
Maverick2 |
200 |
200 |
2,100 |
Frontera |
CPU: 5,000 GPU: 3,000 |
When applying for an allocation on an HPC or Visualization system, you will be asked to estimate the number of service units (SUs) you will require for the project. SUs are calculated based on the wall-clock time of your jobs (measured in hours) and the number of nodes, depending on the system, used to run a job. Each job run on the resource consumes the SUs allocated to a project.
All the TACC resources listed below calculate Service Units (SUs) in terms of node-hours. Specialty nodes, such as GPU’s, may be charged an additional multiplier.
SUs charged = (Number of nodes) X (job wall-clock time) X (multiplier).
A resource justification document will be required when applying for resources. The document should be in PDF form and include a description of the research being conducted and how TACC computation resources will impact this research. It should also describe the scientific applications to be used, and an estimated plan or table justifying the number of node-hours being requested.
The TACC Resource Allocation System (TxRAS) is for researchers from UT Austin, UT System and TACC Partner Institutions to request allocations. ACCESS is for all other US academic researchers. To access Frontera, please read the Frontera Allocations Guidelines.
Mandatory Fields to Include in Your Submission
Request Title
Public Abstract
Main Document: Lonestar6 (4 pages), Frontera (10 pages) including: scientific background, research objectives and specific questions to be pursued, resource usage plan to achieve the research objectives, justification of the allocation amounts for all resources and resource types (scaling information to support the calculation of the resource request), and access to other computational resources and why those resources are not available or sufficient for the work proposed in this request
Startups projects: summary of the proposed experiments (1 page maximum). Estimated resources required (include a short justification of the number and type of nodes you will request, as well as any storage requirements). (1 page maximum) List any sources of funding (or pending funding) that support the proposed research, including funding agency and grant name(s) (Startup Allocations may be for unfunded exploratory research)