Advanced Compute Equipment Request Panel - Terms of Reference

To evaluate requests for AHPC resources. The panel will meet with the requestor to discuss their compute requirements and formulate the optimal solution to meet the computing need. The panel may request more information prior to making a recommendation. The panel will communicate the decision to the requestor, explaining the rationale for the recommended solution. Applicants should engage with the panel at the earliest possible opportunity, particularly if including advanced or high-performance computing resources in funding applications. It is recommended that applicants submit their request to the panel at least 3 weeks prior to the submission deadline for the funding call to ensure that the computing resource requested in the funding application can be supported by the academic unit, NUIT and RSE teams.

The panel will have representation from across the 3 academic faculties, FMS, HASS and SAgE along with Information Security, RSE and IT Consultancy & Academic Support representation from NUIT.

The decision-making process will be based upon:

• How well the existing HPC platform can fulfil the requestors’ requirements.
• Whether requirements are best met by augmenting the existing HPC platform or other existing solutions.
• Cyber security, support, resilience and system management and maintenance considerations.
• Value for money.
• Stand-alone solutions are likely to be the exception.

• Submissions will be via the online form managed by NUIT IT Consultancy & Academic Support.
• A member of the NUIT Consultancy team will meet with the requestor to discuss the request and its requirements. A member of the team will respond to a request within 2 working days.
• Consultant will give a recommendation on how to proceed to the panel.
• Requestors should submit information 2 weeks ahead of the panel meeting to ensure consultancy have time to meet them and panel members have had time to review.
• Meetings will be scheduled once a month for 90 minutes. Applications will be reviewed within a month. If a quicker turnaround time is required, ad-hoc meetings and/or discussions over Teams will support this.
• Requestors have the option to attend for part of the meeting.
• Meetings will be in-person when possible or hybrid/online when this is not possible.
• The initial 30 mins of the meeting will be panel members only, in order to frankly discuss the pros and cons of each request. The following 60 minutes will be to discuss requirements and recommendations with both requestors and panel members present.
• The overall approach should result in the panel’s recommendations being available within 6 weeks of the original request.
• A Teams Channel P26-Next Gen Advanced Computing (HPC) - Advanced Compute Request will be used to highlight new requests and discuss ahead of the panel meeting.
• Any appeals will be dealt with by the Digital Research Sub-Group of URIC.

Decisions on the AHPC requests will be logged here «Insert location of log»

A list of the roles which constitute the Advanced Compute Request panel is maintained in the Advanced Compute Request Guidelines document.

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