Delta Allocations

Types of Delta Allocations

Delta - ACCESS Allocations

90% of the Delta system is allocated through the ACCESS program.

To get started with ACCESS allocations, see the Get Started ACCESS Allocations page on the ACCESS website.

ACCESS resources are allocated on an ongoing basis through Explore, Discover, and Accelerate allocations, and periodically through Maximize allocations.

Delta - Illinois Allocations

5% of the Delta system is awarded by the Illinois Resource Allocation Committee to UIUC faculty and staff researchers during biannual allocation periods.

Awarded Illinois allocations are for one year from the awarded date.

To get started with Illinois allocations, follow the instructions for Submitting your Delta Proposal for a new project allocation, listed below.

Delta - Discretionary Allocations

2% of the Delta system is awarded at the PI's discretion for innovative/exploratory research projects.  Calls for proposals occur periodically at the PI's discretion.

To get started with Discretionary allocations, follow the instructions for Requesting a "New" Delta Allocation, listed below.

Delta Illinois Submission Guidelines and Recommendations

1. Start-up allocations may be requested for test runs and to determine full allocation request needs; up to 1,000 GPU hours, 50,000 CPU core hours
2. The maximum allocation will be about 1/10th of the total allocatable amount per period (~25k GPU hours and ~690k CPU core hours)
3. Research teams are responsible for managing their own export control needs
4. Illinois allocations should be for research only; If resources are needed for instruction, please submit your request through the ACCESS program.
5. There are two Illinois allocation periods open per year, with year-long allocation awards.  The open allocation periods normally occur in August/September (Fall) and January/February (Spring).
6. Delta will allocate the CPU and GPU resources separately, with an emphasis on the GPU resources.  The expectation is that most allocations will be primarily GPU allocations with smaller, supporting CPU allocations.
7. The Delta compute elements are more powerful than the Blue Waters compute units with the Delta CPU nodes offering ~6X faster performance and the A100 GPU offering 15X performance improvement. On a performance basis the Delta Illinois allocation offers the same or better performance than 10% of the Blue Waters GPU nodes, but less than 5% of the CPU capability. The smaller storage pool will also limit Delta’s use for the extended storage of large data sets, though the performance of Delta’s flash based storage will provide much faster throughput for some workloads.
8. Illinois allocation requests should be significantly different from requests by the same user for discretionary requests or have a strong reason (e.g., proposal opportunity, disaster response, etc.). Discretionary allocations should be utilized before an additional Illinois request is made.
9. Faculty or staff for whom the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is their home institution by primary appointment affiliation are eligible to submit an Illinois allocation proposal as Principal Investigator; this includes postdoctoral fellows or postdoctoral research associates. Registered graduate or undergraduate students are not eligible to apply as Principal Investigators due to administrative requirements regarding appointment status, but are encouraged to apply if their faculty or staff advisor will agree to be Principal Investigator on the proposal. Visiting faculty or external adjunct faculty for whom Illinois is not their primary home institution are eligible to apply as Principal Investigators if, for the period covered by the proposal request: i) Illinois will be their primary (majority) place of residence; and: ii) and they will hold appointments at Illinois during this period. All proposals can include co-PIs and collaborators from other institutions.
10. Allocation Definitions:
1. Supplement -- Supplement requests add additional resources to an existing project allocation.  Supplement requests can be submitted up until 30 days remain on the current allocation. If a PI has less than 30 days remaining on their allocation but is in need of a supplement, they must typically first submit and be approved for a time extension. 
2. Extension -- Extension requests add additional time to an existing project allocation by extending the allocation end date.  A time extension can be submitted when less than 90 days remain on the allocation and up to 90 days after the expiration of the allocation.