Allocations and Accounts

Two Types of Projects

The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) is funded by the National Science Foundation to support research at US universities. Most of the NICS resources are committed as part of the XSEDE allocation process. However, NICS also offers a limited number of Director Discretionary awards by request to State of Tennessee researchers, to qualifying workshops and courses, and to researchers for which a special agreement has already been established. For both of these types of projects you can request a new account or join an existing project.

NICS provides resource hours to eligible principal investigators (PIs) through a national peer-reviewed process. These allocations are intended for experienced researchers from academic or nonprofit organizations. Proposals can be submitted throughout the year, and the XSEDE Resource Allocations Committee meets quarterly to make allocations of computer time. A successful proposal will describe an important science problem, the computational plan to meet the science goals, experience of the PI, and the characteristics of the code to be used. The information about Start-up and Educational allocations is available at the XSEDE's How To Get an Allocation page.

NICS offers a limited number of Director Discretionary awards by request to State of Tennessee researchers, to qualifying workshops and courses, and to researchers for which a special agreement has already been established. The standard Director Discretionary allocation is for 200,000 processor-hours for a year. Requests up to 500,000 hours with strong justification will be considered. Larger awards are not likely to be made. However, XSEDE provides an opportunity to receive a much larger award

Request an Account

Please chose the appropriate link below to request an new account or join an existing project.

Details	XSEDE	Director’s Discretion
Duration	1 year	1 year
Allocation Approval	XRAC*	NICS Director
Allocations	Above or below 200K hours	Up to 200K hours
Call for Proposals	Quarterly	At any time
Quarterly Reports
Closeout Report

* XRAC = XSEDE Resource Allocations Committee

What’s Next?

After you’ve applied, what’s next?

• New Accounts Process.
  Once you have a Kraken or Nautilus project, what needs to happen before you can log in.
• Setting the OTP Token PIN.
  How to set your PIN once your token is enabled.
  Please Note: Logging in more than three consecutive times using an incorrect PIN will disable your token. OTP tokens that are not used for a period of three months are disabled. If you believe your token has been disabled for inactivity or as a result of a forgotten PIN, please submit a request to help@xsede.org. You may also call the helpline directly at 866-907-2383
• Access and Login.
  Connection procedures and information about OTP, GSISSH, HPSS, file transfers.
• User Responsibilities.
  When using resources at NICS, you agree to these user responsibilities .

Relevant Documents

Please refer to Policies and Security page for a list of links to all policy related information on the website.