OLCF Director's Discretionary

docs.olcf.ornl.gov · Compute · 1 record · JSON

OLCF Director's Discretionary Compute

fails: identityinstitutionno cardDwrite-gated

docs.olcf.ornl.gov/accounts/accounts_and_projects.html · national HPC allocation · compute/olcf-director-s-discretionary · JSON · compare

Free tier	The OLCF Director's Discretionary program allocates approximately 10% of the available Frontier hours in a calendar year, and a typical DD project is awarded between 15,000 and 20,000 node hours, applied for at any time and lasting up to 12 months. unit hours; metered on wall-clock; exploratory / startup allocation
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not applicable
Retention	not applicable
Egress	not stated
Identity	institution not published
Limits	write-gated The PI must sign a PI Agreement, pass an ORNL export-control review and a Personnel Access System check, and have a User Agreement executed between UT-Battelle and the PI's institution, so a person with no institution has nothing to sign with. source The PI must sign a PI Agreement, pass an ORNL export-control review and a Personnel Access System check, and have a User Agreement executed between UT-Battelle and the PI's institution, so a person with no institution has nothing to sign with.
Binding	write-gated The PI must sign a PI Agreement, pass an ORNL export-control review and a Personnel Access System check, and have a User Agreement executed between UT-Battelle and the PI's institution, so a person with no institution has nothing to sign with.
Interface	unknown inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	A DD award is the documented way to obtain the scaling data that an INCITE proposal requires, so it converts into the INCITE door rather than replacing it.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	This is the highest-value low-friction tier found: 15,000 to 20,000 Frontier node-hours at 8 GCDs per node is roughly 120,000 to 160,000 GPU-hours and 960,000 to 1,280,000 core-hours per award. The GPU-hour conversion is arithmetic from the quoted node composition and the quoted node-hour range, not a vendor figure, so the node-hour numbers are documented and the converted ones are inferred. OLCF states there is no DOE sponsorship requirement. The barrier is institutional signature plus export control, not scientific merit at INCITE scale. A foreign national participant triggers an ORNL PAS request that takes 15 to 35 days.
Evidence rung	documented
Checked	2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-21

Evidence (5)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	docs.olcf.ornl.gov/accounts/accounts_and_projects.html	'The OLCF Director's Discretionary (DD) program allocates approximately 10% of the available Frontier hours in a calendar year. Frontier is allocated in node hours, and a typical DD project is awarded between 15,000 - 20,000 node hours', quoted
2026-10-22	docs.olcf.ornl.gov/accounts/accounts_and_projects.html	Frontier node composition: 1x 64-core AMD EPYC CPU, 512 GB DDR4, 4x AMD MI250X each with 2 GCDs for 8 GCDs per node at 64 GB HBM2E, quoted
2026-10-22	docs.olcf.ornl.gov/accounts/accounts_and_projects.html	'A User Agreement/Appendix A or Subcontract must be executed between UT-Battelle and the PI's institution', quoted; also PI Agreement signed and ORNL PAS entry
2026-10-22	www.olcf.ornl.gov/about-olcf/accel/	'Director's Discretionary Allocation: Allocations (up to 20,000 node hours of compute time) for high impact science and engineering problems that exceed a company's internal computing capabilities', quoted
2026-10-22	docs.olcf.ornl.gov/accounts/accounts_and_projects.html	DD applications accepted at any time, duration up to 12 months, no quarterly reports outside industry; reviewed by the OLCF Resource Utilization Council and independent referees

More fields (1)

{
 "wave2": {
  "class": "national-hpc",
  "free_tier_kind": "exploratory / startup allocation",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": 64,
   "ram_gib": 512,
   "gpu_class": "AMD MI250X (8 GCDs per node)",
   "gpu_count": 8
  }
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (10)

$.egress.metered egress-unknown
$.egress.terms not-stated
$.identity_cost.detail process
$.interface interface-unknown
$.per_object_cap.notes process
$.per_object_cap.stated not-applicable
$.reliability_note none-observed
$.retention.notes process
$.retention.stated not-applicable
$.tooling not-stated