Call Advanced Computing Projects (5th ed) - A0 Experimental Access (round A)

The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) manages the National Advanced Computing Network (RNCA). FCT manages the RNCA and seeks to aggregate national advanced computing resources, promoting cooperation between the various centres involved and developing national and international partnerships with other entities. Under the terms of the Advanced Computing Projects Regulation, published under no. 10/2022 in the Diário da República, the allocation of RNCA computing resources is made following a tender procedure whose terms are publicised on the FCT website.

Are beneficiaries, individually or in co-promotion:

• R&D (Research and Development) institutions;
• Collaborative laboratories;
• Technological interface centers;
• Science and technology infrastructures;
• Science and technology networks and consortia;
• Private non-profit institutions whose main objective is R&D activities;
• Digital Innovation Poles;
• Other public and private non-profit institutions that develop or participate in research, development, or innovation activities;
• Companies developing advanced computing projects in research, development or innovation activities;
• Individuals operating in Portugal and who wish to develop advanced computing projects in any scientific area.

Regarding applications from companies as beneficiaries, the advanced computing projects should:

• occur within the scope of pre-competitive research and innovation, without market value;
• not exceed 50% of the total computational allocation to be allocated in this call.

• High Performance Computing (HPC)
• Artificial Intelligence Computing (IA)
• Scientific Cloud Computing (SCC)

These advanced computational models aim to support applications in various areas, such as bioinformatics, climate, materials and life science, computational chemistry, physics, and civil engineering, among others, thus supporting research and enhancing the competitiveness of the national industry.

• A0 – Experimental Access recommended for teams with no previous experience or history of using RNCA resources to test and explore the available HPC, AI, Cloud or visualisation resources for 6 months.
• A1 – Development Access recommended for software performance testing, code optimisation, scalability testing, benchmarking, re-factoring for 3 - 12 months.
• A2 – Regular Access recommended for scientific or innovation projects whose team has consolidated previous experience and needs resources in Deucalion and/or Cirrus+Stratus platforms for 12 months.
• A3 - Larger Access recommended for scientific or innovation projects whose team has consolidated previous experience and require larger amounts of resources on the Deucalion or MareNostrum 5 platforms for 12 months.

See more details on the limits and maximum duration for each type in section 3 of the Call Notice - check supporting documentation in the sidebar.

Under the terms of Articles 14 and 15 of the Advanced Computing Project Regulations and in accordance with the call notice and evaluation guide, all A0 applications will only be submitted for validation of technical suitability by the technical teams operating the computing platforms in accordance with the following simplified criteria:

• T1: Technical suitability to RNCA resources 
• T2: Computational resources reasonableness 
• T3: Work Plan

This validation is based on the qualitative classification of "accepted" and "not accepted", with no final score being calculated. Accepted applications will be dealt with in rounds and on a first-come, first-served basis until the defined quota is exhausted.

Applications for the A0 access type must be submitted in English on a form on the myFCT platform.At the end of the deadline, applications will be validated for their technical suitability and then allocated to the platforms. If the quota of resources (5%) is not used up in this batch, new batches of submissions will be opened according to the schedule:

Round of applications | Submission dates

A | 10 September 2024 (1pm) - 22 October 2024 (5pm)

B | 22 October 2024 (5pm) - 17 December 2024 (5pm)

C | 17 December 2024 (5pm) - 18 March 2025 (5pm)

D | 18 March 2025 (5pm) - 17 June 2025 (5pm)

E | 16 June 2025 (5pm) - 16 September 2025 (5pm)

Important note: The following limits defined in the call for proposals apply:

• Limits for A0 applications: Each IR can submit a maximum of ONE application in each typology, subject to the availability of resources (see point 9 of the call notice).
• Resource limit for A0 projects: 50,000 CPU core.hours, 730 GPU.hours, maximum duration of 6 months (see point 3.2 of the call notice).

Information about applications can be requested through the email address: rnca@fccn.pt 

No information published on this page replaces or supersedes the Regulation and the Call Notice.