USQCD Quarterly Allocations Reduction Policy

Beginning with the 2016-17 Program year, the SPC is adopting a new policy to encourage more even use of allocations throughout the year. The following is taken from the Call for Proposals document.

USQCD is adopting a new policy this year to encourage more even use of allocations throughout the year. At the beginning of the current allocation year last July, a large fraction of the projects at Fermilab and JLab were not ready to run. After alerting the allocated projects of this fact, the site managers properly began letting unallocated projects run in opportunistic mode in order that cycles not go completely to waste. This was not an optimal use of our resources which had been so painstakingly allocated by the SPC. Further, it undermines the case of our friends in Germantown who are arguing for more resources for us if we are not ready to use the resources they have already given us. In order to discourage this situation, we are adopting a policy already in use at supercomputer centers such as NERSC and requiring projects to use some of their allocation in each calendar quarter. Projects that fail to do this will forfeit some of their allocation for the quarter, which will be added to the allocations of projects that are ready to run.

The following table shows how the reductions will be assesed during this program year.

Allocation Year 2016-17

Allocations for this Program Year begin on July 1, 2016 and run through June 30, 2017.

First Quarter - on October 1, 2016

• If a project's usage is less than 10% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 25% of the unused balance.

Second Quarter - on January 1, 2017

• If a project's usage is less than 20% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 25% of the unused balance.
• If a project's usage is less than 5% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 50% of the unused balance.

Third Quarter - on March 1, 2017

• If a project's usage is less than 40% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 25% of the unused balance.
• If a project's usage is less than 20% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 75% of the unused balance.
• If a project's usage is less than 10% of their allocation, there will be a reduction of 90% of the unused balance.