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Capability Incentives

Introduction

The principal purpose of the Research Councils in funding the HPCx service is to provide a system with capabilities which are unmatched by computing services at the University or department level. Part of the mission of HPCx is to encourage users to broaden their computational work to take full advantage of these capabilities. Courses, technical documentation and direct assistance from the HPCx team are offered to help users in scaling their codes ro run efficiently in large numbers of processors.

The capability incentives scheme is an encouragement to users to broaden their computational science in this way. Under this scheme, codes which scale well are run at a discount — that is, users are not charged the entire cost in AUs of running them. The Capability Incentives policy statement shows that codes are awarded "Seals of Approval" at three levels, depending on how well they scale.

How it works

If you have a code which you feel scales to the standard described in the policy statement for the scheme, the first step is to send a query to the helpdesk (support@hpcx.ac.uk) making your claim.

This will be investigated by a member of the HPCx team, in consultation with you. If the code measures up, the Seal of Approval will be registered in the HPCx database, and a token for it will be created. The codes and tokens currently registered are shown below.

When you use a code with a Seal of Approval, you include the token in your jobscript, as explained below. When the accounting for you job is done, the software recognises the token, and discounts the number of AUs taken from your budget.

In response to a number of questions, here is a table showing the size of the discount for differing numbers of processors and approval levels.

	Minimum Number of Processors
Level	256	512	1024
Bronze	5%	5%	5%
Silver	5%	15%	15%
Gold	5%	15%	30%

Each token grants a Seal of Approval for a particular project to use a particular code. If the code you wish to use has a Seal of Approval, but no token for your project, please get in touch with the helpdesk (support@hpcx.ac.uk).

Code	Project	Level	Token
CASINO	e05	Gold	e05G17-CASINO
CASINO	e06	Gold	e06G16-CASINO
CASINO	e40	Gold	e40G33-CASINO
CASINO	n03	Gold	n03G15-CASINO
CENTORI	e98	Gold	e98G55-CENTORI
Code_Saturne	z001	Gold	z001G49saturne
CP2K	e06	Gold	e06G20-cp2k
CRYSTAL	b01	Silver	b01S4-CRYSTAL
CRYSTAL	e05	Silver	e05S3-CRYSTAL
DL_POLY	e05	Gold	e05G19-DLPOLY
DL_POLY_3	c01	Gold	c01G40-DLPOLY3
FD3D	c01	Gold	c01G53-FD3D
Fluent	e20	Silver	e20S41-FLUENT
GAMESS-UK	b05	Gold	b05G9-GAMESS
HemeLB	e27	Gold	e27G38-HemeLB
Hydra	z06	Gold	z06G32-HYDRA
KPPW	c01	Silver	c01S30-KPPW
KPPW	e05	Silver	e05S31-KPPW
LAMMPS	e32	Gold	e32G25-LAMMPS
LAMMPS	z001	Gold	z001G22-LAMMPS
LB3D	e10	Gold	e10G2-LB3D
LB3D	e17	Gold	e17G7-LB3D
LB3D	x01	Gold	x01G6-LB3D
Ludwig	e10	Gold	e10G8-LUDWIG
MERLIN_3D	e20	Bronze	e20B34-MERLIN3D
MERLIN_ADJ	e20	Bronze	e20B35-MERLINADJ
MERLIN_OPTIM	e20	Bronze	e20B36-MERLINOPTIM
NAMD	b02	Gold	b02G23-namd
NAMD	e10	Gold	e10G11-namd
NAMD	e27	Gold	e27G42-namd
NAMD	e28	Gold	e28G24-namd
NAMD	e58	Gold	e58G43-namd
NAMD	e99	Gold	e99G54-namd
NAMD	z001	Gold	z001G12-namd
PDNS3D	e01	Gold	e01G5-pdns3d
PDNS3D	e36	Gold	e36G37-pdns3d
PDVR3DRZ	e04	Gold	e04G21-pdvr3drz
PMEFEL	x01	Bronze	x01B10-pmefel
POLCOMS	n04	Bronze	n04B39-POLCOMS
PRMAT	e03	Silver	p01S47-PRMAT
ROTORBMGP	e20	Gold	e20G14-rotorbmgp
TELEMAC3D	z001	Gold	z001G56-TELEMAC3D
VASP	e05	Gold	e05G27-VASP
VASP	e06	Gold	e06G29-VASP
VASP	n03	Gold	n03G28-VASP
VASP	z001	Gold	z001G26-VASP

1. Find the appropriate token for your code and project in the table above. If there is no token allowing your project to get a discount with the code you wish to use, please get in touch with the helpdesk (support@hpcx.ac.uk). Notice that if there is, for example, a gold Seal of Approval, you can still run the code using less than 1024 processors — you will just get a lower rate of discount.

2. Insert the token into the job_name line of your job script. For example:

   #@ job_name = #abcdef-ghijk#job123

   ...where abcdef-ghijk is the token and job123 is the usual name of your job. The # characters must be there.

3. Then submit your job as usual. The discounting will be done by the accounting software after your job has run.