In 2021 the alliance for National High Performance Computing (Nationales Hochleistungsrechnen – NHR) was established. The NHR alliance is funded by the federal ministry of education and research (BMBF) and the federal states in Germany. Resources and expertise for high-performance computing are combined to support researchers at German universities free of charge. The alliance is not restricted to give access to compute hardware but offers support and education in the area of scientific computing. The content of these offers cover a wide range of applications and it is available nationwide.

One of nine NHR centers within the NHR alliance is situated at Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). The name of this center is NHR@ZIB. Due to the installed compute systems, the NHR@ZIB is a fundamental element in the national infrastructure of high-performance computing. ZIB is a member of the NHR association which coordinates the activities in the NHR alliance.

The compute systems of the NHR are devoted to researchers at German universities. They can be used within joint projects which can also include international participants. NHR projects for compute time are peer reviewed respecting scientific principles. This procedure is organized by the coordinating nationwide NHR scientific board (NHR-Nutzungsausschuss). The review process and the evaluation of the project capacity is done in the local scientific board (Wissenschaftlicher Ausschuss) of the NHR@ZIB.

One part of the scientific service at NHR@ZIB is the assistance of researchers in the course of the realization of the project aims and the efficient usage of the NHR resources. In particular this applies to application domains like Life Sciences, Earth system science, chemistry, physics, engineering, social science and to the scientific computing domains machine learning and performance engineering. Our service is embedded into a supra-regional and interdisciplinary network which connects on-site users, projects, and consultants during the whole lifetime of a project.