ACCESS Resource Advisor

ACCESS provides many essential High Performance Computing (HPC) resources to researchers across diverse scientific disciplines. However, selecting the most appropriate resource from the numerous available options presents significant challenges, especially for researchers without extensive technical expertise. This paper introduces the ACCESS Resource Advisor (ARA), a web-based tool designed to guide researchers toward suitable HPC resources by using accessible language, only asking about basic HPC concepts that users would understand, identifying workflow patterns, and providing recommendations with minimal required input. We detail the design philosophy, implementation approach, and rules-based recommendation used by the ARA. Usage data collected over ten months demonstrates consistent adoption, averaging 99.2 recommendations per month, with recent increases coinciding with the tool’s integration into the ACCESS Resource page. By simplifying the resource selection process, ARA helps researchers from over a hundred scientific fields make more informed decisions about computational resources, ultimately improving research efficiency and resource utilization across the ACCESS ecosystem.