ALCC
science.osti.gov · 2 records in Compute, Storage · JSON
Records 2
- fails: identityALCC
Computefree tieridentity institutionno cardlimit write-gatedevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-22
- fails: quotaALCC (ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge)
Storagefree tieridentity institution?card?limit write-gatedevidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05
ALCC
Compute- Free allowance
- 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...
- Verdict
- fails: identitythe identity required is not reachable without it
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institutionno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- write-gatedAvailable 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...
- Evidence
- documented4 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22
| 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 |
| Limits |
|
| Identity | institution not published |
| Egress | not stated |
| 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: 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. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
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
| facets | {"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 values 7
- egress metered: egress metering was not published
- egress terms: a source was read and is silent on this field
- interface: the access interface was not established
- per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
- retention stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
- tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field
- Free allowance
- 10-30% of ALCF/OLCF/NERSC resources each year, with associated project storage (e.g.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institution?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- write-gatedreview
- Evidence
- reported2 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| 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 |
| Limits |
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. |
| Identity | institution (inferred, not read) not published |
| Egress | Free to allocation holders. |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| 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). |
| Parsed numbers |
|
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 values 4
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- per object cap stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read