Call for Early Use of ASPIRE 2A

Resource allocation period	Q4-2022 until 30 June 2023 (subject to changes)   Successful applicants will be informed as soon as the system is ready for use.* *Note that details of the application results will be notified to all applicants via email.
Application period	1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023 (confirmed) Please note that you will need to submit an official project application via the Call for Research Project after 31 March 2023.

1. Overview

The National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore has awarded the tender for the development of the next generation national supercomputer system plus upgrades to the national storage and research network infrastructure. The new system is expected to provide up to 10 Petaflops (10 PFLOPS) of computing capacity and is eight times more powerful than the current supercomputer. The new supercomputer is the first in a series of systems that will form the backbone of the nation’s future supercomputing resources which will support research in areas like climate change, biomedical science and smart nation activities, etc.

This call aims to open the ASPIRE 2A to all interested applicants for the early use of the system in preparation for the official system launch. This will allow them to be better prepared to be more effectively use the system. NSCC will be accepting applications while getting the system ready. Once the system is ready, we will inform all successful applicants on the onboarding process.

2. Available Resources

Available CPU: Approximately 72M core hours per month

Available GPU: Approximately 187K card hours per month

Please refer to more information on ASPIRE 2A:

• ASPIRE 2A Architecture and Specifications
• ASPIRE 2A Software List

3. Eligibility

• Open to all researchers from NSCC’s stakeholder organisations (A*STAR, NTU, NUS, SUTD, TCOMS, NEA, ETH, PRECISE) and partners.
• Please refer to Section 8 ( Prohibited Use) in the Acceptable Use Policy for the category of individuals who are prohibited from using NSCC’s resources.

4. Resource Approval Criteria

This call is open for the early use of ASPIRE 2A for purposes such as software verification, porting, tuning, test runs, etc.

The applications will be reviewed by the Policy & Resource Allocation Committee (PRAC) and the Technical Resource Allocation Committee (TRAC) which comprise expert representatives from NSCC stakeholders and AI Singapore.

5. Notification of Application Results

Applicants will be notified of the outcome via email as soon as the review process is completed.

6. Details

• Priority will be given to users with existing projects. Note that projects from the Jan’22 Cycle (ending 31 Dec 2022) and wishes to continue their project should apply for this call.

• For users with existing projects, the project data will be migrated from ASPIRE 1 to ASPIRE 2A. Once the software is successfully running on ASPIRE 2A, users will have the opportunity to have their existing project allocation will be transferred from ASPIRE 1 to ASPIRE 2A, along with the benefits that the ASPIRE 2A environment brings.

7. Useful Information

• Guideline for Application Form

8. Disclaimer

The system is made available to the research community for early access AS-IS AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES, including without limitation any express or implied warranty as to fitness for purpose, reliability, accuracy, validity or otherwise of the system. In particular, NSCC does not warrant the system to be free from design, implementation, and operational issues, or from flaws which may result in system failure, mis-calculation or loss of data.

Updated 29 March 2023