Schedule of Calls for HPC Project Access in 2026
| Call | Opening Date | Deadline | Decision / Access Granted | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEVANA, PERUN | ||||
| Standard Access 1/26 | 5 January | 5 February | 19 February | Devana only |
| Standard Access 2/26 | 4 May | 1 June | 16 June | |
| Standard Access 3/26 | 7 September | 5 October | 20 October | |
| Testing and Benchmarking Access | Continuous | – | Ongoing, within 1 week of submission | |
| PERUN | ||||
| Early Access – Testing and Benchmarking | 1 March | Until 15 June 2026 | Ongoing, within 1 week of submission | Testing period with a potentially limited application portfolio |
CURRENTLY OPEN CALLS
TESTING AND BENCHMARKING ACCESS
The call for Testing and Benchmarking Access is open continuously throughout the year. Applications may be submitted at any time exclusively through the User Portal.
This access scheme is primarily intended for collecting data on application performance, parallelisation, scalability and data storage requirements prior to applying for Standard Access. It may also be used for less time- and compute-intensive projects.
Access is provided free of charge, subject to compliance with all requirements defined in the Call Conditions. Applications must clearly define the need to use and test applications in an HPC environment. Submitted projects are evaluated by the internal HPC team of the Centre of Operations of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (VS SAV).
| Call information | Details |
|---|---|
| Call opening date | 31 March 2026 |
| Application deadline | Continuously open throughout the year |
| Notification of project approval | Within 2 weeks of project submission |
| Maximum project duration | 6 months |
| Available systems | Devana HPC system, Perun HPC system |
Eligible applicants: Testing and Benchmarking Access is open to scientists and researchers from Slovak public universities and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, as well as organisations in the public and state administration sectors. Access is provided exclusively for civil, non-commercial, open-science research and development.
Available allocation per project
| System | CPU allocation | GPU allocation |
|---|---|---|
| Devana | 50,000 CPU core-hours | 780 GPU-hours |
| Perun | 50,000 CPU core-hours | 780 GPU-hours |
STANDARD HPC ACCESS 3/26
Standard access to high-performance computing resources is open to all areas of science and research and is primarily intended for larger-scale projects. Projects should demonstrate excellence in their respective fields and a clear potential to deliver innovative solutions to current societal and technological challenges.
The application must demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of the proposed computational approaches and methods in an HPC environment. Performance data and parameters of the algorithms and applications under consideration can be obtained through Testing and Benchmarking Access.
Allocations are granted for one (1) year, with the possibility of applying for continuation if necessary. Submitted projects are technically evaluated by the internal team of the Centre of Operations of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (VS SAV), while the quality of the scientific and research component is usually assessed by two independent external reviewers.
| Call information | Details |
|---|---|
| Call opening date | 7 September 2026 |
| Application deadline | 5 October 2026, 17:00 CET |
| Notification of project evaluation | Within 2 weeks of the deadline |
| Start of allocation usage | Approximately 20 October 2026 |
| Allocation period | 1 year |
Eligible applicants: Free Standard HPC Access is available to scientists and researchers from Slovak public universities and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, as well as organisations in the public and state administration sectors. Access is provided exclusively for civil, non-commercial, open-science research and development.
Available systems and allocations
| System / Resource | Available allocation |
|---|---|
| Devana CPU | 22 M CPU core-hours |
| Devana GPU | 83,220 GPU-hours |
| Perun CPU | 35 M CPU core-hours |
| Perun FAT CPU | 11 M CPU core-hours |
| Perun GPU | 800,000 GPU-hours |
Available systems:
- Devana HPC system – general-purpose CPU module and accelerated GPU module
- Perun HPC system – general-purpose CPU module, large-memory CPU module (FAT CPU), and accelerated GPU module
AI CHALLENGE 2026 – CALL FOR COMPUTE-INTENSIVE AI PROJECTS
AI Challenge 2026 supports scientifically or technologically excellent projects that are ready to scale AI model development and other computationally intensive AI workloads to high-performance GPU infrastructure.
The call targets mature, compute-ready projects with a clearly defined research or development objective, prepared datasets and computational workflows, and demonstrated technical feasibility. Applicants should be ready to move from smaller-scale experimentation to large-scale GPU-accelerated AI workloads on the NVIDIA GH200 accelerated module of the PERUN supercomputer.
Relevant projects may include, but are not limited to:
- foundation models and large language models (LLMs),
- multimodal models,
- computer vision,
- graph neural networks,
- scientific machine learning,
- domain-specific AI models,
- reinforcement learning and large-scale AI optimisation,
- large-scale model evaluation, benchmarking or synthetic data generation, where these activities constitute a computationally substantial part of the proposed research or development project.
Projects must demonstrate both scientific or technological excellence and a high level of computational readiness. Information regarding these crucial points must be stated in the project description or directly in the submission form.
The call is not intended for early-stage exploratory projects that have not yet demonstrated technical feasibility at a smaller scale.
Key information
| Parameter | Details |
|---|---|
| Available infrastructure | NVIDIA GH200 accelerated module of the PERUN supercomputer |
| Total GPU capacity | 500,000 GPU-hours |
| Minimum allocation request | 15,000 GPU-hours per project |
| Project duration | 6 months |
| Allocation method | Competitive, based on project quality, technical readiness and justified computational requirements |
The number of projects to be supported is not predetermined. The available capacity may therefore be allocated to a smaller number of highly ranked projects with larger, well-justified computational requirements.
Allocated GPU-hours must be consumed within the six-month project period. Extensions of the project period, increases of the awarded allocation, or transfer of unused GPU-hours beyond the project end date will not be permitted.
Eligible applicants: Free access under AI Challenge 2026 is available to researchers from Slovak public universities and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, as well as eligible organisations from the public and state administration sectors.
Call Timeline
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Call opening | 7 September 2026 |
| Application deadline | 5 October 2026, 17:00 CET |
| Notification of results | Within 5 days after the application deadline |
| Start of allocations | 10 October 2026 |
| Project duration | 6 months |
Full Call Text and Conditions: