The U.S. Department of Energy’s ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) has awarded 24 projects a total of 1.7 billion core-hours at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Each year, the ALCC program selects projects with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission and for broadening the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources.

Managed by DOE’s ASCR (Advanced Scientific Computing Research) program, ALCC provides one-year awards that range from a few million to several-hundred-million core-hours to researchers from industry, academia, and government agencies. Chosen through a peer review process, ALCC projects cover a wide range of research areas, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, physics, climate modeling, and materials science.

In addition to ALCF, allocations of computing time are also awarded at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) and NERSC at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The 2015 ALCC awards include 43 projects totaling more than 3 billion core-hours across the three ASCR facilities. Additional projects may be announced at a later date as ALCC proposals can be submitted throughout the year.

Below is a summary of the 24 projects awarded time at the ALCF. Some projects received additional computing time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and/or NERSC.