This page is for new PIs who are interested in joining the JHPCE as well as for PIs who have previously registered with us but need to create a new project, collaboration or organization.
Overview
The JHPCE cluster has approximately 3100 cores, 25TB of RAM and 15PB of mass storage.
Computing fees vary depending which queue is being used. Users affiliated with particular stakeholders can access the corresponding dedicated queue(s). Non-stakeholders can only access the shared queue and non-dedicated storage. The effective rate on the “shared queue” is currently hovering around $0.01/cpu-hour. Effective rates on dedicated queues are generally lower.
Storage fees vary depending on which device your data resides. The effective rate on the home file system is approximately $345/TB-year but is limited to 100GB/user.
The lowest cost storage belongs to stakeholders who have invested in dedicated project space. The rate for the DCS01 DCL01 allocations is around $30/TB-year.
We build a new storage system roughly very year. We advise potential storage stakeholders to let us know well ahead of time of their expected needs. So that we can include them when it comes time to plan the next build. Storage stakeholders contribute up-front to the purchase/construction cost of a storage system and then they receive a proportional allocation of the capacity. Buy-in for new storage systems is hovering around $40/TB.
The facility operates as a “common pool resource” in the sense formalized by E. Ostrom and others. Users affiliated with stakeholders have the right of priority access to the resources that they “own”. All users, whether they are members of a stakeholding organization or not, are otherwise treated identically. Excess computing capacity is made available to the entire community via a low priority “shared queue”. The shared queue provides surge capacity to stakeholders and and access to HPC resources to non-stakeholders. Stakeholder fees are defrayed to the extent that their capacity is used by others. There is no guarantee that non-stakeholders will have sufficient capacity to perform their research. Historically, however there has almost always been sufficient capacity for all the users. Please contact the director to so that you can make in informed decision about joining the JHPCE.
In this way the system has been able to meet the needs of both the stakeholders with the greatest HPC consumption, and the needs of the smaller users in the long tail of HPC consumption (where the bulk of the science is performed). All this is accomplished with light-weight polices and light-weight organizational infrastructure (< 2FTEs) , which is a major reasons that we are able to keep our costs low.
Users install their own apps. Given the heterogeneity of the community, it is not practical to provide application support. Instead we enable the community with a help list.
New Project/Sponsor Form
Please fill out this form to register a new project or organization with us and to provide a budget number. If you are new to the JHPCE, please contact the Director of the JHPCE: Mark Miller or Brian Caffo (jhpce@jhu.edu), to assess the alignment of your computational needs with the capabilities of the cluster and to review the policies of the JHPCE.
—
—-