Applying for time

To use the Lovelace HPC cluster for your research you will need to apply for time. To do this, please ask your supervisor to complete the application form (below).

Allocations Policy

Applications are considered in batches by the HPC Stakeholder Sub-Committee periodically. Once your application has been approved you will be issued with a project account code which is used to associate your HPC job with your time allocation.

Research projects may also purchase additional time on the system at a marginal rate which includes the cost of the nodes and interconnect but excludes infrastructure costs.

If you exceed your allocation then you may submit a follow on project, or ask for more time to be added, which must be agreed by the committee.

The Allocations Policy is currently under review by the HPC Stakeholder Sub-Committee. Please see the current proposal. If you wish to comment on this proposal, please email research-computing@lboro.ac.uk and your comments will be collated and passed to the HPC Stakeholder Subcommittee for consideration.

Advice on Filling in the Form

The application form asks for a description of your research, a justification of the need to use HPC for your research, how much time you will need, and what software you will be using.

For those who are unsure of how much time their projects will need we strongly advise that you first request some sample time to experiment with before making your first project application. We can allocate up to 20,000 core hours to you for this purpose without the need to take a full application to the HPC Stakeholder Sub-Committee. To request sample time please use the main application form (below), fill it in as completely as you can and be sure to mention that it is a request for sample time.

Please note that researchers are responsible for ensuring that any software licenses they will need are available. The HPC service itself only provides some standard development tool licenses (for the Intel compilers and libraries).

Application Forms

Sample Time Appplication Form

New users are advised to apply for Sample Time initially.

HPC Time Application Form

To be filled in an submitted by the project's PI or the PhD student's supervisor.

Acknowledging use of HPC Services

If you write a paper about work which used our HPC services then please include an acknowledgement.

For Lovelace, we suggest:

"This paper acknowledges the use of the Lovelace HPC service at Loughborough University"

For the recently retired Athena service the suggested acknowledgement is:

"We acknowledge the use of Athena at HPC Midlands+, which was funded by the EPSRC on grant EP/P020232/1, in this research".