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Request PATh Facility Credits

All compute time on the PATh Facility is charged using a credit system.

Credits are granted from the NSF and associated with the active project. This guide details the process and templates available to request credits.

PATh staff can provide a small startup allocation at any time for initial testing before a full credit request.

Requirements

The opportunity to use PATh Facility resources is available to all PIs submitting, or having submitted, proposals to the programs listed below: Program Officers

How to Apply

  • New Proposals: As documented in the PAPPG 24-1, Ch 2, section E.7, projects can request credits as part of the award process. Include the request for HTC resources as a Supplementary Document attached to the proposal (as described in the original DCL NSF 22-051).

  • Existing Awards: Email the NSF cognizant program officer of their project, and copy credit-accounts@path-cc.io, with the description of their HTC resource request. Please include "HTCAccess" and the award number for the funded project in the e-mail subject line.

Sample Credit Request

The credit request should include:

(1) the anticipated total HTC resources required, with yearly breakdown; and (2) a technical description and justification for the request. The latter should include information regarding (a) the expected number of self-contained tasks per ensemble ‒ note that each task can be packaged into one or more batch job(s); (b) the resource requirements for each task type in the ensemble ‒ for example, requirements for cores, memory, wall-time, and scratch space; (c) the expected number of ensembles; (d) the expected input and output data requirements for each task type; and (e) the expected number and size of shared input files within an ensemble – expected number of times each file is read per ensemble.

This should be no more than two pages. The Research Facilitation team has assembled a template credit request for you to use as a starting point: Template for NSF PATh Credit Requests

How Many Credits?

If you are not sure how many credits to request for your allocation, please do one or more of the following:

  • Use the credit calculator developed by the Facilitation team:
    • Go to the sample credit calculator here: PATh Facility Credit Calculator
    • Follow the instructions in the calculator - make a copy and fill in information about your jobs and ensembles to generate a credit estimate.
  • Contact the PATh Facility team at credit-accounts@path-cc.io
  • Request an account and startup allocation on the PATh Facility to run test jobs and determine resource needs and possible scale: Getting Started

The current credit system is documented on this page: PATh Facility Credit Charges.

Program Officers

Requests can be submitted to the following program officers, based on domain: