Institute for Digital Research and Education
UCLA-IDRE has an impressive Hoffman2 computing infrastructure. It has grown from an initial 256 cores to the current 12,000+ cores in a short span of time. It serves a large number of research scientists and enables them to achieve new heights within their computing research. However, there are limitations. It may fall short of ever increasing computing needs that require extremely large parallel scaling, jumbo size memory on a single node, or considerable number of systems for analysis using high throughput computing approach.
The Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautical Space Agency support an ecosystem of “leadership class” computing facilities housing some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers and high-end visualization and data analysis resources. These facilities provide “free” computing cycles and storage to researchers from academia. Access to these resources is obtained through an application process that is based on the merit of the research objectives, and demonstration of the efficacy and parallel scalability of the software to utilize such computing resources.
The aim of this presentation is to explain the capabilities of various “leadership class” computing facilities in the US. It will also cover the IDRE Pipeline program which helps transition UCLA researchers from local resources to take advantage of these “free” magnificent computing facilities.