Pawsey Supercomputing Centre and NCI Australia have launched a COVID-19 Special call for High-Performance Computing (HPC), cloud, storage resources and associated technical support for research projects directly responding to the pandemic.
All research (academic, government or commercial sector) focussed on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic which requires computation and/or data resources will be considered.
According to the WHO, COVID-19 is a form of pneumonia first detected in Wuhan, China. The WHO continues to support the global effort to contain the global pandemic and minimise the impact on human health by enabling early detection and tracking of the disease in all countries.
WHO is also supporting the acceleration of efforts to “fast-track the discovery and development of lifesaving vaccines, diagnostics and treatments”. The “WHO is working 24/7 to analyse data, provide advice, coordinate with partners, help countries prepare, increase supplies and manage expert networks”.
NCI is offering up to 20 Million Service Units (MSU) on the Gadi supercomputer, and 0.5 PB of storage. Additionally, NCI will provide storage for major reference data sets (national or international) needed to support the computational and data analysis by multiple projects. Cloud resources may be allocated on NCI’s cloud systems.
Resources available at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre include large data stores and the new refreshed Nimbus Cloud service. COVID-19 projects will have access to allocations of up to 500 cores, with up to 100 TB of storage available for use during 2020 – 2021. Additionally, remote visualisation services are also available.
A total of up to 1 PB of storage will be considered for long term use during the project among the two Australian Supercomputing Centres.
Expert support services (e.g. code optimisation, workflow debugging, visualisation expertise, data management advice, etc.) will be provided by dedicated support staff.
All applications for resources at NCI and Pawsey will be prioritised and expedited, in line with the special circumstances the COVID-19 pandemic warrants.
Applications are now open. To find how to apply visit here
Karina Nunez, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre
