Request Time for Research Servers

Two parallel supercomputers operated by the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications offer researchers a powerful tool in advancing their work. 

Dell NVIDIA Cluster (Forge)
Forge consists of 36 Dell PowerEdge C6145 quad-socket nodes with dual 8-core AMD Magny-Cours 6136 processors and 64 GB of memory. Each node supports 6 NVIDIA Fermi M2070 GPUs. Peak performance is 153 teraflops.

SGI Altix UV (Ember)
Ember consists of 4 SGI Altix UV 1000 systems each with 384 cores and 2 TB memory with Intel Xeon Nehalem-EX (6-core) processors. Peak performance is 16 teraflops.

If you are interested in an allocation of time on either Forge or Ember, please send a request for allocation to allocations [at] parallel [dot] illinois [dot] edu. Proposals do not need to be long but should address the following:

  1. An overview of the work you wish to accomplish,

  2. The period of time over which the allocation will be used (ending no later than Oct 1, 2012),

  3. Why the selected resource is appropriate (e.g.,how will the special features be exploited),

  4. The amount of time (in service units) requested,with a justification of the amount,

  5. Information on related grants covering the work (Name,supporting agency, PIs), 

  6. Any special software requirements. You may need to arrange for third-party software not currently on the system. A list of available software will be available; check the web site for details.

Questions about the process or how to determine which system may be appropriate should be sent to allocations [at] parallel [dot] illinois [dot] edu.

Preference will be given to proposals that make good use of each system’s special features. Roughly 400,000 SUs are available on Forge and 3 million SUs are available on Ember, to be used before October 1, 2012. Proposals may be submitted at any time. 

For more information, please contact PCI Research Coordinator jpeckham [at] illinois [dot] edu (Jill Peckham).