CHRONOS (Computationally-Intensive, High-Impact Research On Novel Outstanding Science) is an annual call for proposals issued by CSCS for high-impact, challenging and innovative research opened to all fields of science. Researchers from academia and research institutes are eligible to apply. The CHRONOS proposals can be awarded for one year.

If you wish to submit a CHRONOS project you need to have (in pdf format):

• Your CHRONOS project proposal as by the template (see below)
• Your curriculum vitae
• Your list of publications 

The  portal for the proposal submission is : projectoffice.cscs.ch

CHRONOS on Alps is an annual call. The next deadline for submission of CHRONOS proposals is on Monday May 19, 2025 at 17 CEST for the allocation starting on October 1, 2025!

***Be aware that the submission portal closes at 17:00 CEST, after that you will no longer be able to submit a proposal!***

CHRONOS on LUMI-G can be biannual if resources are available. The next deadline for submission of CHRONOS proposals on LUMI-G is on Monday May 19, 2025 at 17 CEST for the allocation starting on October 1, 2025!

***Be aware that the submission portal closes at 17:00 CEST, after that you will no longer be able to submit a proposal!***

Proposers must hold at least the position of post-doc within an academic institution.

PhD students CANNOT apply on their own, but instead must do so in consultation with, and under the auspices of, their supervisor. In such cases the supervisor should be identified as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project.

International applications (and collaborations) will be accepted only if proposers and their teams are from academic institutions and use of GPUs is clearly proved and supported by all technical data.

Double-awarding is not allowed. Applicants have to submit original proposals that have not already been submitted and/or granted in any other HPC programs.

Proposers whose project proposals are granted must hold an academic position for the duration of the project. CSCS reserves the right to close the project otherwise.

Principal investigators have to apply for:

• the HPE Cray EX LUMI-G at CSC (Swiss share) > 1 Mio GPU hours
• the HPC vCluster on the Alps Infrastrcuture > 250'000 node hours

All mandatory items have to be performed on the LUMI-G and  Alps Grace-Hopper.

Your resource request needs to be a mimimum of a 1 million GPU hours on LUMI-G, if that would be your targeted system. LUMI-G will have  CPU: 64 core AMD Trento; GPU: 4 AMD MI250X GPUs (Further information on LUMI can be found here: https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu/lumis-full-system-architecture-revealed/) and  from 250'000 node hours on HPC vCluster on Alps infstraucture.

If you do not have access to the targetted system please contact projectoffice(at)cscs.ch.

The CHRONOS Tier-0 projects are expected to address high-impact, challenging and innovative research problems in all fields of science involving highly parallel and scalable simulations and in need of large allocations.

The project proposal must conform to these requirements:

• Length: no longer than 20 A4 pages including graphs and references
• Font:  Arial or Times New Roman and font size 11 using single line spacing
• Margins: at least 2.54 cm in all directions. These requirements apply to all sections of the proposal

The project proposal should strictly follow the template and guidelines provided here:

• CHRONOS_Tier-0_Technical_Guidelines » 
• CHRONOS_Tier-0_Project_scope_and_plan »

The documents that need to be submitted are:

• Project Proposal (pdf format)
• Curriculum Vitae (pdf format)
• Publication List (pdf format)

VERY IMPORTANT:  All applicants must apply for a Preparatory Project, unless they already have access to Alps. Preparatory access allows you to port your code, to test it, and to collect all the information necessary for a CHRONOS Tier-0 Project Proposal.

Please be aware that proposals rejected in previous calls cannot be resubmitted!

Awards are made based on the quality and scientific impact of the research and on the suitability of the proposed simulations for the requested resources.

The review process is structured as follows:

• Complete proposals will be subjected to a technical feasibility assessment
• Complete proposals will be subjected to scientific review which will be carried out by reviewers from an international pool. Each proposals will have three peer reviewers
• Based on the technical/scientific reviews a panel committee of scientific experts will rate the projects and make a final allocation recommendation

Applicants do not receive intermediate feedbacks, the communication will only happen within 2-3 weeks from the SAC meeting

This is an annual call for proposals. The allocation period starts on October 1.

The deadline for submission of proposals is May 19, 2025 at 17 CEST.