HPC News

Resource Allocation Outcomes
29 March 2011

The outcomes of the recent resource allocation round for McLaren and NCI have been released, and can be viewed here.

HPC Resource Allocation round closes today
25 February

Applications can be made online at http://www.intersect.org.au/hpc-resource-allocation.

HPC Resource Allocation round to open 11 February
2 February

Intersect will call for applications from Friday 11th February to Friday 25th February. Allocations will be made for both McLaren and NCI facilities for the period from 1st April to 30th September 2011.  Applications are made online at http://www.intersect.org.au/hpc-resource-allocation. New users, including from smaller institutions, non-traditional HPC disciplines as well as research students, are encouraged to use the HPC facilities.

HPC LIEF grant successful
1 December 2010

The Intersect consortium of NSW's application for a flexible architecture HPC facility has been successful. Lead CI, University of Sydney's Prof Leo Radom says, "thank you to everyone who contributed to this success". The $500,000 grant, along with organisational contributions, presents an opportunity to evolve NSW's large scale infrastructure and design a balanced infrastructrue which will include large scale data storage.

MAS application round at NCI open for 2011
19 October 2010

NCI's Merit Allocation Scheme (MAS) is currently open for applications for Jan - Dec 2011. The application deadline is 03 Nov 2010. For compute time in addition to Intersect's partner share of NCI, please consider making an application. Please note that MAS applications are made via NCI's (not Intersect's) webpage: https://nf.nci.org.au/accounts/#projects.

Resource Allocation Outcomes
1 October 2010

The outcomes of the recent resource allocation round for McLaren and NCI have been announced, and users notified of their allocations.

Resource Allocation Closed
14 September 2010

The resource allocation round has now closed, and the results will be announced shortly. The next formal round of resource allocations will commence in February 2011.

Resource Allocation Round Opens
12 August 2010

Intersect has opened the next formal round of resource allocation for Intersect HPC resources. There are some key items you need to be aware of:

 - this call for applications is open till Friday 10 September 2010.

 - the allocations will be for access to both McLaren and our NCI share, and you can apply for resources on either or both through the one application (online), if they are for the same project.

 - the allocations will be for the six month period 1 October 2010 to 30 March 2011. This is aligned with the calendar quarters used at NCI, and allows us to mesh with their merit allocation rounds.

 - Intersect actively encourages new users, including from smaller institutions, non-traditional HPC disciplines, as well as research students, to avail themselves of the opportunity to gain access to significant HPC facilities.

Applications can be made through an online system here

Please note there are two forms, one for account creation and one for resource allocation. If you already have an account, you only need to fill out the latter.

Software Update
3 May 2010

ANSYS 12.1 is now available on Mclaren as well as on NCI. All users from UNSW and USYD can use it. The license files are hosted directly on the machines so there is no need to contact a license server.

Software Updates
7 April 2010

Intersect has recently updated the following software packages:

• New version of the Intel compilers 11.1.069
• New version of the Intel MKL 10.2.4.032
• New version of R 2.10.1
• New version of Octave 3.2.4

Please use the new version and let us know if there is any problem at hpc_support@intersect.org.au
It is advisable for projects to use the latest compiler and library versions.

NCI reports: Welcome to the larger vayu!
13 March 2010

“vayu” has now grown  to about 9000 CPUs and will grow by a further 3000 CPUs  in the coming weeks.  There should be no more noticeable downtimes. There have been a few other changes to the system so please report any problems you encounter. Note  that longer jobs will progressively be scheduled over the next two days as confidence in the system grows.  

NCI downtime confirmed
10 March 2010

The NCI National Facility has confirmed the following outage:
Vayu downtime will now commence at 8am on Thursday March 11.  Please submit jobs to keep vayu busy until 8am Thursday.  Note that jobs that will not complete before the downtime will not be started.

Downtime planned for Vayu at NCI - week of 9-12 March
4 March 2010

HPC users are alerted that there is potentially a significant outage at NCI coming up the week of 9 – 12 March 2010. Although yet to be confirmed, there is likely to be a two day downtime in order to install the new Vayu nodes. Queues are starting to drain with this expectation. Users are advised to archive their short data as a precaution.

Resource Allocation Round Outcomes
24 February 2010

A resource allocation round for McLaren and NCI was undertaken at the start of 2010. The resultant allocations can be seen here

There will be regular calls for major computational proposals every six months i.e. in February and August, and more modest project proposals can be received at any time. If you need a resource grant, please contact Intersect directly at hpc_support [at] intersect [dot] org [dot] au.

Changes to HPC Services
15 January 2010

The super computer Barossa was decommissioned on 31 October 2009. For those users interested in using the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), we have arranged early access and are able to assist users to trial the NCI systems. Interim access is flexible, and can range from an NCI startup grant of 50 service units to something more sizable. We think we have been in touch with all the formerly active projects on Barossa, and are looking for any other projects that want to trial or migrate to NCI in the short term.

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