ALCC

science.osti.gov · Compute, Storage · 2 records · JSON

ALCC Computefails: identityinstitutionno cardDwrite-gated
ALCC (ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge) Storagefails: quotainstitutionno cardRwrite-gated

ALCC Compute

fails: identityinstitutionno cardDwrite-gated

science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A · national HPC allocation · compute/alcc · JSON · compare

Free tier	ALCC allocates 10% to 30% of the allocatable time on Frontier, Aurora, Polaris and Perlmutter, which for the 2026-2027 cycle is published as 20,000,000 node-hours on Frontier and 16,000,000 node-hours on Aurora, with awards of one year extendable to three by renewal and proposals due 26 January 2026. unit hours; metered on wall-clock; merit-reviewed allocation
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not applicable
Retention	not applicable
Egress	not stated
Identity	institution not published
Limits	write-gated Available to researchers from universities, industry and government agencies with no DOE sponsorship required, but every participating institution must sign the ASCR facility user agreement, and the award is capped below INCITE size unless the request serves a DOE mission or national emergency. source Available to researchers from universities, industry and government agencies with no DOE sponsorship required, but every participating institution must sign the ASCR facility user agreement, and the award is capped below INCITE size unless the request serves a DOE mission or national emergency.
Binding	write-gated Available to researchers from universities, industry and government agencies with no DOE sponsorship required, but every participating institution must sign the ASCR facility user agreement, and the award is capped below INCITE size unless the request serves a DOE mission or national emergency.
Interface	unknown inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	ALCC is the second rung of the DOE ladder above Director's Discretionary and below INCITE, and it is the only DOE programme that explicitly requires a DOE-mission or national-emergency rationale, which is why it is the harder sell for a general data-science workload.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	The largest absolute published pool in this assignment: 37 million node-hours across Frontier and Aurora for one cycle, with roughly 120,000 to 160,000 GPU-hours per 15,000 to 20,000 Frontier node-hours at 8 GCDs each. Those totals are the programme pool, not a single award: the page says award size is 'Small-medium' and never states the per-project maximum, so a per-award figure would be invented. ALCC is the natural comparison for INCITE because both use the same machines and the same technical assessment, and the difference is the mission justification rather than the identity cost.
Evidence rung	documented
Checked	2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-21

Evidence (4)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'20,000,000 node-hours on Frontier at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, 16,000,000 node-hours on Aurora', 1,000,000 node-hours on Polaris, 2,250,000 CPU-node-hours and 1,250,000 GPU-accelerated node-hours on Perlmutter, quoted
2026-10-22	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'Available to researchers from universities, industry, and government agencies. DOE sponsorship is not required'; '10% to 30% of the allocatable computing time will be made available'; proposals due 26 January 2026; decision late May, quoted
2026-10-22	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'proposals seeking very large allocations are more appropriate for the INCITE allocation program. Projects that request more than the maximum request limit will be considered nonresponsive', quoted
2026-10-22	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'Proposals undergo an external peer-review and assessment by computational experts at ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC', quoted

More fields (1)

{
 "wave2": {
  "class": "national-hpc",
  "free_tier_kind": "merit-reviewed allocation",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": null,
   "ram_gib": null,
   "gpu_class": "AMD MI300A (Frontier), Intel Data Center GPU Max (Aurora), NVIDIA A100 (Perlmutter, Polaris)",
   "gpu_count": null
  }
 }
}

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

ALCC (ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge) Storage

fails: quotainstitutionno cardRwrite-gated

science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A · academic · storage/alcc · JSON · compare

Free tier	10-30% of ALCF/OLCF/NERSC resources each year, with associated project storage (e.g. OLCF 200 TB archive, 50 TB work). unit TB; metered on stored-bytes
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not stated
Retention	not stated
Egress	Free to allocation holders.
Identity	institution derived from the record's prose, not from an identity field, and no signup was executed: ively closed to an unaffiliated individual: two independent institutional gates (employer + DOE sponsor). Larger per-project storage than most grants, but gated behind a DOE-relevant compute
Limits	write-gated review source Requires 'Funded researchers affiliated with a university, lab, agency, or industry' AND a named DOE program manager/sponsor - 'you need to provide the name and email of your program manager/project sponsor... projects that do not have input from the sponsor program will not be competitive'. One-year allocation, renewable up to 3 with annual renewal. Proposals without a recognised funding source are rejected without review.
Binding	write-gated the write is a queue with a person or a rule in it, so the upload rate is set by somebody else
Interface	ssh posix
Tooling	SSH, Globus, Lustre/HPSS.
Composes with	Larger per-project storage than most grants, but gated behind a DOE-relevant compute case.
Reliability	Effectively closed to an unaffiliated individual: two independent institutional gates (employer + DOE sponsor).
Notes	10-30% of ALCF/OLCF/NERSC resources each year, with associated project storage (e.g. OLCF 200 TB archive, 50 TB work).
Evidence rung	reported One page read moves it to documented.
Checked	2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-04

Evidence (2)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-21	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'Funded researchers affiliated with a university, lab, agency, or industry'; 'Proposals that lack a PI affiliated with a recognized entity...'; 'ALCC does NOT award any funding'
2026-10-21	science.osti.gov/ascr/Facilities/Accessing-ASCR-Facilities/A	'allocation year runs from July 1 - June 30th... with a possibility of renewal for up to 2 years'

More fields (1)

{
 "dead_end": {
  "failure_class": "quota",
  "why": "10-30% of ALCF/OLCF/NERSC resources each year, with associated project storage (e.g. OLCF 200 TB archive, 50 TB work).",
  "retry_when": null,
  "first_recorded": "2026-10-21"
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (6)

$.extras.dead_end.retry_when process
$.free_tier.notes process
$.per_object_cap.notes not-extracted
$.per_object_cap.stated not-extracted
$.retention.notes not-extracted
$.retention.stated not-extracted