Projects, allocations, and review cycles
Accessing NeSI HPC facilities
To gain access to NeSI's services, you apply for access for a specific project. First, you'll first need to create a NeSI account profile, then you can apply for your project account.
Who can apply
Government-funded research teams
Anyone with competitive external research funding, e.g. Marsden, MBIE, HRC, CoRE, National Science Challenge, etc.Postgraduate students
Anyone studying towards a research degree (Masters or PhD) at a New Zealand degree-granting institution.Anyone affiliated with a research institution
This includes New Zealand universities, Crown Research Institutes, or other research-focused organisations.
For more information on the types of institutions and organisations using NeSI resources, see our Partners & Pricing page.
For examples of research projects using NeSI HPC facilities and other eResearch services, visit our Case Studies section.
Allocations on the HPC systems
A technical expert will review your project application to ensure that NeSI can offer your project team a suitable mix of resources and services. Once your project is approved, you will be granted an allocation of resources (compute time and online storage) and access to the systems.
We welcome applications for new projects at any time. Generally, we aim to reply to requests within 3-5 business days. This may take longer depending on the complexity of the application.
More information on how we review applications.
Review Cycles
NeSI recognises that research programmes often continue over several years before coming to an end. With that in mind, allocation applications are assessed at different times depending on the type of allocation. A high-level summary is provided below. For more details, read about our quarterly allocation periods here.
Your first allocation
For each research project, preliminary allocations are granted for a period of three to six months to allow your project team time to determine:
- whether your software can run on NeSI systems,
- how your software scales to multiple cores or across compute nodes,
- approximately how much resource (often measured in compute units or node hours) your research project is likely to need.
Following a successful run of your preliminary allocation, you will be invited to apply for a second allocation in either the Merit, Postgraduate, or Institutional allocation pool. Second and later allocations are granted a maximum term of one year.
Second and later allocations
Towards the end of an existing allocation, we will invite you to apply for a followup allocation to continue using NeSI to support your work. Note: Renewal requests must be submitted within the timeframe specified in our renewal remainder emails. Please try to respond to any renewal reminder emails in a timely manner if you wish to avoid interruptions to your system access.
Allocations will usually be timed to end at the end of one of our allocation quarters. For more details on that timing, visit our Support pages.
Questions / More Information
For more detailed information about the allocation classes, review cycles, and other steps involved with getting access, visit our Support pages or contact support@nesi.org.nz.
