The Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) enables faculty members and their research groups to access compute, storage and cloud resources beyond what can be obtained via the Rapid Access Service (RAS).
Important: The resources available via the RAS will change on April 1, 2024; the minimum amount of resources required to apply for RAC has also changed. Please read the RAC Competition Guide carefully for more details.
If you are not sure about which application process is best for your project, please email allocations@tech.alliancecan.ca.
You may also wish to consult our Frequently Asked Questions page and the Technical Glossary.
Key dates
|
Event |
Date |
|
Resources for Research Groups (RRG)
Research Platforms and Portals (RPP)
|
September 26 to November 7, 2023 |
|
RAC 2024 general information session |
English – Recording Presentation |
| Information session: important changes to GPU resource requests, allocations and charging | English – Recording Presentation French – Recording Presentation |
|
Announcement of RAC 2024 results |
Late March 2024 |
|
Implementation of RAC 2024 allocations |
Early April 2024 |
Eligibility
To be eligible to submit an application to any of the Resource Allocation Competitions, Principal Investigators (PI) and Co-PIs must:
- be a faculty member at a Canadian academic institution, and
- have an active Alliance account with an Academic Principal Investigator role (Faculty, Adjunct Faculty or Librarian).
Important:
- You must apply with your primary, most up-to-date position. If you recently moved to a different institution and have not yet applied for a new faculty role in the CCDB, please do so before submitting your RAC application.
- If you have more than one active faculty role on the CCDB, please make sure that your most up-to-date position is set as your primary role. On the CCDB, go to the Home page to see which of your roles is currently set as primary and, if needed, click on the Make this role primary button next to the new role that you want to set as primary.
Failing to do any of the above could create problems if your application is successful.
Guiding Principles
RAC is guided by the following principles:
- All applications are given fair consideration through both a peer-review and a technical review
- Resources are awarded based on the appropriateness of the computational resources requested to achieve the project's objectives and the likelihood that these resources will be efficiently used, rather than on the evaluation of a complete research program; and
- The challenges arising from the shortage of resources and other constraints within the system are shared among all applicants.
Past Competitions
To view the results of past Resource Allocation Competitions, please click here.