How do I apply for an account on the HPC Service or research storage?
If you are a University of Cambridge user wishing to use HPC resources, please apply for a user account using the form for internal users.
If you are entitled to use National Facility services (e.g. DiRAC, IRIS or Tier2), then please see our National Facilities page for further information. We recommend that if you are also a University of Cambridge user, you apply for access on that basis first, and then request National Facility resources after your user account has been created. You will receive access to any research storage affiliated with your National Facility project automatically with the related CPU/GPU hour resources.
If you are a member of an external organisation but are affiliated with a project on the HPC cluster, please apply for a user account using external user application form.
Purchases of research storage may be initiated by University of Cambridge users at the self-service portal. The nominated data owner or data manager may then nominate users who may access the storage – the self-service portal will send the nominated user an email with further instructions. This applies whether or not the user has an account on the HPC cluster.
I am a member of the University of Cambridge. Can I use Research Computing Services for free?
Principal investigators and leaders of research groups may request the free tier of service on the HPC cluster, and approve students and colleagues for access to a number of free CPU or GPU hours (this is replenished at the start of each University accounting quarter). If you are a student, please approach your supervisor who may already have access to the free tier. In addition, each HPC user account receives 1 TiB of free (non-shareable) fast storage.
You may also be able to apply for resources through the National Facilities. Please consult their web sites (i.e. STFC IRIS, STFC DiRAC, Tier2) for details of eligibility and the application process.
When using the free tier, supplementary paid CPU or GPU hours can be purchased at any time. This is done by asking your department to raise a University purchase order (PO) to ‘Information Services’ and sending it to purchases@hpc.cam.ac.uk
Purchased hours confer higher job priority and resource limits. Extra storage may be purchased (whether or not you are a HPC user) from the Research Computing Service's storage self-service.
I am not a member of the University of Cambridge. Can I use Research Computing Services for free?
Only members of the University of Cambridge are eligible for the free tier of service on the HPC cluster. You may be able to apply for resources through the National Facilities. Please consult their web sites for details of eligibility and the application process.
If you are a member of an external organisation, it may be possible to purchase HPC hours or storage at external rates (inclusive of VAT). This will typically require a contract – please email support@hpc.cam.ac.uk if you would like to enquire about this.
How do I buy HPC resources or storage?
The procedure here is different for the HPC and storage services. For the former, please ask your department to raise a University purchase order (PO) to ‘Information Services’ and send it to purchases@hpc.cam.ac.uk
Current prices for CPU and GPU hours can be viewed on our internal service costs page.
For storage services, all purchases take place through the self-service portal. The self-service portal will generate quotes, against which departmental POs (made out to ‘Information Services’) can be raised, and POs should be uploaded via the portal (not sent by email, please).If you are a member of an external organisation, it may be possible to purchase HPC hours or storage at external rates (inclusive of VAT). This will typically require a contract – please email support@hpc.cam.ac.uk if you would like to enquire about this.
Can I run (insert name of software) on the HPC cluster?
In general, provided the software supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the answer should be yes. Please note that if the software is proprietary, it will be necessary for you to provide the necessary license and possibly the installation files.
The service desk can help with issues such as installing and running. If you require software development work, please contact the Research Software Engineering team.
How do I get help, or ask a question not covered here?
Please email support@hpc.cam.ac.uk