Sponsor
Digital Research Alliance of Canada
For More Information
For questions, please contact allocations@tech.alliancecan.ca. Further contact information can be found in the Resource Allocation Competition Application Guide.
Description
On September 26, 2023, the Alliance Federation launched its annual Resource Allocation Competition (RAC), a peer-reviewed process to grant priority access to compute, storage and cloud resources beyond what can be obtained via the Rapid Access Service.
The Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) enables faculty members and their research groups to access compute, storage and cloud resources beyond what can be obtained via the Rapid Access Service (RAS). The resources available via the RAS will change on April 1, 2024.
Refer to the Resource Allocation Competition Application Guide for details on entry and eligibility.
Eligibility
To be eligible to submit an application to any of the Resource Allocation Competitions, Principal Investigators (PI) and Co-PIs must:
- be a faculty member at a Canadian academic institution, and
- have an active Alliance account with an Academic Principal Investigator role (Faculty, Adjunct Faculty or Librarian).
Users with an Academic PI position may:
- apply as PI for only one RRG application at a time (either through the full application process or the Fast Track one) but can be involved in multiple RRG submissions as a participant; and
- be the PI for one RPP application per competition round and be involved in other RPP applications as a co-PI.
Funding Availability
RAC is guided by the following principles:
- All applications are given fair consideration through both a peer-review and a technical review;
- Resources are awarded based on the appropriateness of the computational resources requested to achieve the project's objectives and the likelihood that these resources will be efficiently used, rather than on the evaluation of a complete research program; and
- The challenges arising from the shortage of resources and other constraints within the system are shared among all applicants.
Resources provided by the Federation are limited, and for this reason requests for allocations are scaled every year based on the overall score of the application and the supply and demand.
A scaling function is applied to compute requests to provide a means by which decisions on RAC allocations in a context of insufficient capacity can be made. Visit the Past RAC results page for more details about the scaling function and other stats from previous years.
Deadlines
If College-level review is required, your College will communicate its earlier internal deadlines.
| Type | Date |
|---|---|
External Deadline |
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted electronically using the online application form provided on the CCDB portal. An application template is available in the Resource Allocation Competition Application Guide.
Research requiring compute, storage and cloud resources to meet their goals should apply through the RRG (Resources for Research Groups) process. Projects primarily needing persistent instances in the cloud to provide a service through a platform or a portal should apply through the RPP (Research Platforms and Portals) application process. If you are not sure about which application process is best for your project, please email allocations@tech.alliancecan.ca.
It is extremely important that the online application form includes a request for every resource (CPU, GPU, storage or cloud) that your project needs on each cluster.
If applying for the first time, it is strongly encouraged to schedule a pre-submission consultation before October 31, 2023. Consultations can be scheduled by emailing allocations@tech.alliancecan.ca.
You must apply with your primary, most up-to-date position. An up-to-date Canadian Common CV (CCV) is required for the peer-review process.
Information For Co-applicants
In the context of this competition, a Co-PI is any Canadian faculty with an Alliance Academic PI role that is actively involved in the computational project. The PI and any Co-PI must upload an updated CCV with the application.
International investigators or colleagues without an Alliance account can be listed as collaborators in the Resource Management section of the application document.