Argonne Leadership Computing Facility 2024 Operational Assessment Report

This Operational Assessment Report describes how the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) met or exceeded every goal set by DOE for the calendar year (CY) 2024. In CY 2024, the ALCF operated Polaris, an AMD and NVIDIA-based Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Apollo 6500 Gen10+ system that provides a powerful platform for breakthrough science and prepares applications and workloads for Aurora, Argonne National Laboratory’s Intel-HPE exascale computer. Since going into production in August 2022, Polaris has supported research teams from the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), which concluded in 2024, and from ALCF’s Aurora Early Science Program (ESP). Polaris delivered a total of 2555.7K node-hours to 17 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) 2024 projects and 601.6K node-hours to ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) projects (12 of which were awarded during the 2023–2024 ALCC year and 11 of which were awarded during the 2024–2025 ALCC year), as well as providing substantial time for Director’s Discretionary (DD) projects (966.2K node-hours). As Table ES.1 shows, Polaris performed exceptionally well in terms of overall availability (97.7 percent), scheduled availability (99.6 percent), and utilization (94.7 percent; Table 2.1). In CY 2024, ALCF supported more than 2,000 users. As of March 18, 2025, ALCF’s users have published 254 papers in peer-reviewed journals and technical proceedings.. Authors: Papka, Michael E. [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF)] (ORCID:0000000264185767); Allcock, William [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF)]; Cerny, Beth [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF)]; Francis, Jennifer; Kumaran, Kalyan [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF)]. DOE Contract: AC02-06CH11357. Subjects: 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING