Access is granted to those who have submitted an application for an NHR computing project that has been successfully evaluated.

Who can apply?

The following groups can apply for NHR resources:

• Members of a public or state-recognized, institutionally accredited German university (including FH/HAW)
• Professors or persons with a doctoral degree (PhD, Dr.)

Are there other options?

• If you don't have a doctoral degree but your supervisor does, you can be the Person of Contact (PC) and your supervisor will need to apply and sign as the Principal Investigator (PI) for the project.
• If you are not a member of a public or state-recognized, institutionally accredited German university, but the planned computing project is in cooperation with a PI who meets the criteria, you can also act as a PC, even if the other person applies for the project as PI and is responsible for it.
• Additional project staff can be added by the PC to the project according to the local rules of the respective NHR center. 

The first step before applying for computing time should be to determine your needs.
This will determine whether a high-performance computer is appropriate for your research project, which project category is suitable, and which center is the best fit.

1. Check if you have special requirements:

Do you need

• specific type of Hardware (e.g. CPU type, GPU type)?
• very high memory demands per CPU node or GPU; i.e., more than 256 GB memory per node or more than 40 GB GPU memory?
• long job run time (wall clock time)? This should only be used if it is absolutely necessary!

Unless you have specific requirements, you can generally carry out your project at any center. We recommend choosing a center with the appropriate scientific focus, as these centers offer corresponding software and consulting services.

Take a look at the Center Overview to see which centers can meet the requirements and scientific focus - also use the available filters.
 

2. Units for resource requirements

For NHR projects, the computing resources are counted on an annual basis in:

• Million CPU-core hours [M CPU-core h]: Allocating one CPU-core for one hour results in one CPU-core-hour. Using 256 CPU-cores one year results in 2,242,560 core-h or about 2.2 M CPU-core h.
• Thousand GPU-hours [k GPU-h]. Allocating 1 GPU for 1 year results in 8.760 GPU-h or about 8.8 k GPU-h.

It is important to use the correct units! A common mistake is entering incorrect information by a factor of a thousand.
 

3. Rough estimation of resources

For a rough estimate, different sources/questions can be helpful: 

1. What was your resource usage in other compute time projects or on other HPC systems?
2. In which time frame will you need the resources? 
3. The default runtime of NHR projects is one year but multi-year projects are easily possible. What is the resource usage (number of CPU-cores or GPUs) and runtime of a typical representative calculation? 
4. Roughly how many such calculations will you need? 
5. Using this information, you can estimate the required resources as the product:

• For CPU-cores [M CPU-core h]: (#CPU-cores) × (runtime of job in hours) × (#calculations)/1 Mio.
• For GPUs [k GPU-h]: (#GPUs) × (runtime of job in hours) × (#calculations)/1,000.

This rough estimation can help you to decide if NHR resources are relevant for you and to decide the Project Category that suites your project.

If you need support
Don't hesitate to contact us: info(at)nhr-verein.de

No matter which state you are in, you can use the resources of any NHR Center. The best center for your project may not be the one closest to you!

The centers have different thematic focuses and offer corresponding software and consulting services.

All centers offer excellent hardware for HPC applications, but if you have specific requirements, you should take a closer look at what is available. Please use our center overview, the available filters, and the comparison options available under “Available Hardware” to identify the center that best matches your application and hardware requirements.

For the final decision you may contact the support of the center and/or visit the local cluster introduction courses.

If this is the first time you are applying for an HPC project and you are unsure which NHR Center best matches your requirements, we recommend applying for an NHR Starter Project without specifying a preferred center.

Submission of proposals | Templates

Proposals for all NHR project categories must be submitted by the PC via the NHR JARDS web portal.

A web form must be completed in NHR JARDS. For NHR starter and test/preparation projects, only a few entries are required to assign the project and verify the technical requirements. For normal and large projects, you can specify more extensive technical requirements.
In addition, applications for normal and large projects require a detailed project description, which includes a brief scientific description of the project as well as details justifying the requested resources (e.g., schedule, proof of scalability). The NHR templates (Download all NHR templates) must be used for this project description. The PDF is then also uploaded to the portal.

Privacy policy for the “NHR JARDS Online Portal” as well as connected software components for the submission and review of computing time applications (only available in German).

Roles (PI, PC, PM)

Principle Investigator (PI): The PI is responsible for the project and must sign the application. The PI must be members of a public or state-recognized, institutionally accredited German university (including FH/HAW) and must be Professors or persons with a doctoral degree (PhD, Dr.). The PI may also act as the PC.

Person of Contact (PC): The PC is the point of contact for the NHR regarding the project. He/she uploads the application, manages the resources, and is responsible for inquiries and reporting. 

Project Members (PM): Additional project staff can be added by the PC to the project according to the local rules of the respective NHR center. 

Detailed Project Description | Templates

There are different templates for new applications, follow-up applications, and applications for projects that have already been scientifically reviewed (see above). 
Download all templates (Templates are available for both LaTeX and Word)

Process and Rules of Evaluation

Based on the application, the project will be evaluated, and resources will be allocated:

1. First, a technical check is carried out for all project classes to determine whether the application meets the formal criteria and whether the requested resources and software are available at the center. If the need for revision is identified at this stage, applicants are contacted and asked to make corrections. NHR-Starter and NHR-Test/Preparation projects are approved upon successful check. Normal and large projects can begin with limited resources pending approval.
2. Scientific reviews are then obtained for NHR Normal and NHR Large projects.
3. Based on the review results, the center’s local allocation committee decides on the allocation of resources for NHR Normal projects. For NHR large projects, the local committee only makes a recommendation, and the NHR Allocation Committee (Nutzungsausschuss) allocates resources for all NHR Large projects at its quarterly meeting.

The basis for the award is the NHR Rules of Procedure ("Verfahrensordnung für ein NHR-weites Vergabeverfahren", only available in German). The Rules of Procedure comply with the requirements for NHR funding as specified in the AV-FGH (only avaliable in German) and are developed and updated by the NHR Allocation Committee (Nutzungsausschuss) in consultation with the NHR Operators Committee (Betreiberausschuss).

The NHR supercomputers are valuable and costly resources that can be used free of charge by researchers. Access is granted through a science-based allocation process to ensure appropriate use - simply submit an application to get started.

Publications such as papers, presentations, and other publications that include results generated using computing resources provided by the NHR Association should include an appropriate acknowledgment. Please select and use the acknowledgment text that corresponds to your project.

When applying for DFG projects, the equipment required for the project must be specified. 

In principle, reference can be made to NHR resources here, but it should be clarified in advance with a suitable center that the technical requirements necessary for the project will be met.

You want to apply for an NHR Normal Project, and your research project has already been reviewed scientifically by a German federal ministry (BMFTR BMWK, BMUV, BMEL,...), DFG, GCS, European Union (EU projects), Volkswagen Stiftung or another NHR center then the detailed description is drastically shorter*. 

However, the resource requirements will be reviewed from a scientific perspective and their compatibility with the selected HPC system will be checked.   

At some NHR Centers, simulation programs which are well known don't require a scaling analysis in the detailed project description. Click on the link and see which codes are accepted as well known good scaling codes by the center.

• NHR@TUD: List of accepted codes 
• NHR@FAU: List of accepted codes
• PC2:            List of accepted codes