The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) has completed its 23rd Call for Large-Scale Projects, allocating a total of 2.3 billion core hours across 20 national research projects. The allocation amount marks an all-time high for GCS, and is more than triple the amount of computing time allocated in its 22nd Call for Large-Scale Projects.

GCS, which is based in Berlin, comprises the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ). The centers host supercomputers like JUWELS (JSC, 6.2 Linpack petaflops), SuperMUC-NG (LRZ, 19.5 Linpack petaflops) and Hawk (HLRS, 26 peak petaflops). GCS allocates resources to these constituent centers and systems.

To qualify for the semiannual Call for Large-Scale Projects, the projects had to require at least 100 million core hours on Hawk, 15 million core hours on JUWELS or 45 million core hours on SuperMUC-NG – in each case, 2 percent of the systems’ annual estimated production time.

The 20 awarded projects span a wide range of fields. JSC will host five projects, including new work on molecular dynamics, the Higgs boson and quarks from researchers at four different universities. The largest allocations of JUWELS time went to two elementary particle physics research projects, led by researchers from the University of Bonn and the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. 

LRZ, meanwhile, will play host to the most projects, with ten different research teams (hailing from nine different universities) receiving allocations of time on SuperMUC-NG, their topics spanning quantum matter, hadrons, muons and more. The largest allocations of supercomputing time at LRZ are going to an astrophysics project led by researchers from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München that will investigate the origins of cosmic rays and magnetic fields.

Finally, HLRS will host five projects from four institutions, including work on plasma physics, aerodynamics and more. The two biggest allocations of the entire Call for Large-Scale Projects both went to fluid dynamics projects at HLRS: a team from the University of Stuttgart (who are researching laminar-turbulent transition) and a team from the RWTH Aachen University (who are researching noise reduction by porous material for commercial aircraft wings) each received an allocation of 500 million core hours on HLRS’ Hawk system.

The scientists who have been awarded time to the resources at the various centers will have access to the supercomputers immediately, with the core hour allocations expiring at the end of April 2021. 

To read more about any of the 20 projects that received allocations of computing time, view the GCS landing page here.

Header image: the newly-inaugurated Hawk supercomputer at HLRS.