High Performance Computing Services

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High Performance Computing (HPC) Information

A High Performance Computing (HPC) system is a very large computer system that has more memory, disk space and processing capacity than any single desktop computer could accommodate.

ASA provides High Performance Computing (HPC) services at no cost to faculty, staff and enrolled students of public schools, colleges, and universities in Alabama. This allows universities to create a trained workforce with the skills needed for jobs in engineering, science, mathematics, aerospace and medical research fields. Click here to apply for a HPC account.

For others outside of education that are interested in using our HPC resources, access to the HPC systems can be purchased at rates that are competitive with other well supported HPC facilities. If you would like to inquire more about how ASA can help meet your high performance computing needs, please click here to contact HPC Support or send an email to hpc@asc.edu.

The supercomputers at the Alabama Supercomputer Center (ASC) are used for two main activities, college course work and academic research. Students can utilize the supercomputers to develop skills in any computing related field. This creates a pool of potential employees for industries such as modeling & simulation and computer programming (to name a few).

The Alabama Supercomputer Authority makes high performance computing systems available to support all of these activities. This provides Alabama residents with a better education and a higher earning potential. The availability of skilled workers is a factor in attracting new industry and jobs to Alabama.

The high performance computing (HPC) system at the Alabama Supercomputer Center is named DMC (Dense Memory Cluster). The DMC has 3700 CPU cores and 26.1 terabytes of distributed memory. There are several generations of compute node hardware with Ivy Bridge, Broadwell, Skylake, and Milan processors. The DMC includes a small collection of graphic processing units (GPUs), which are P100, V100, and A100 models. A large memory node has 6 TB of memory. A scratch file system provides temporary storage while jobs are running.

Usage of the DMC is managed via a fairshare queue scheduling algorithm. User accounts can utilize up to 7 TB of storage. Additional disk space can be purchased.

COMING SOON: ASA will be installing a new HPC system named ASA-X. The X is Roman numeral ten to denote that this will be ASA's tenth HPC system. ASA-X will be available in Fall of 2023.

A wide variety of software is available on the HPC system including software for programming, artificial intelligence (AI), fluid dynamics, materials science, mathematics, molecular dynamics, bioinformatics, quantum chemistry and more. The selection of software packages is driven by faculty requests.

The majority of the software is open source or free for academic use. There are a few high use, commercial programs (such as Gaussian) which are also available. Additional commercial software is available for purchase by ASA (if there is enough demand and use for the software).

A comprehensive list of available software is on the documentation website at https://hpcdocs.asc.edu/. An HPC account is required to access the documentation website.

Two types of High Performance Computing (HPC) accounts are available: Academic Use and Commercial Use.

Academic Use: Access and use of the HPC system is for faculty, staff, and students enrolled at public educational institutions in Alabama. Access is provided at no cost. Academic use includes homework assignments, work that will appear in a thesis, and work that is being published in peer reviewed literature.

Commercial Use: Organizations in the United States can purchase HPC time at competitive prices. For pricing information, please click here to contact HPC Support or send an email to hpc@asc.edu.

To obtain an account for classroom instruction, the course instructor will need to contact HPC Support. Class accounts will have access to a separate class queue with dedicated hardware. Class accounts are deleted at the end of the semester.

Regular accounts can be kept as long as you are a qualifying institution and you have provided annual renewals. Students should create their HPC accounts under their own name. If you are creating an HPC account for the first time, or if you are renewing your account, please fill out the HPC Account Request and Renewal Form.

Please note: The HPC system is not certified for HIPPA, ITAR, NIST 800-171, DOD Classified, GDPR or most other government defined security standards.

Links

HPC Account Request and Renewal Form

These are some examples of HPC success stories:

"I appreciate everything you're doing with the DMC and besides this, it's been a pleasure to use!" - Phillip Lane, UAH Graduate Student
"If you do simulations and computing then the Alabama Supercomputer is good for it. I personally have used it for simulations." - Dr. Madhuri Mulekar, Chair Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of South Alabama
"It's a great service!" - Dr. Joshua Booth, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alabama Huntsville
"It sounds like most labs already using the ASC are really happy with the resource." - Dr. Paul Wolf, University of Alabama in Huntsville Biology Department Chair
While showing Dr. Michael Sandell (Professor of Biology at the University of West Alabama) the HPC Docs website, he commented that it was much better than the documentation for the campus HPC system he used in graduate school.