Research Computing Services
The University of Melbourne has a long history of providing High Performance Computing (HPC) resources for its research community (staff, postgraduates and affiliates). These have been provided either by the University itself, or through collaborative arrangements with other organizations. In 1999 the Supercomputing and Research Support group within the University's Information Technology Services department was reformed into the Advanced Research Computing section which is now part of Information Technology Strategies and Developments, a department of the Information Services.
The University of Melbourne has joined with five other Victorian Universities to form the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC). VPAC is a member of the Australian partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), and both VPAC and APAC have established "peak facilities" to provide HPC facilities above what can be provided locally at member institutions. If you need resources greater than those available locally then you may be able to draw on those resources to satisfy their needs.
Currently there are five major facilities available at the University of Melbourne :
- an NEC SX-4B vector supercomputer (satori)
- a parallel workstation farm
- a batch-server farm
- an Open MP node
- the Computer Visualization Facility
- two eight-node clusters
These separate facilities allow us to follow a strategy where we match your computing requirements to the most appropriate computing systems thus providing the best performance possible while maximizing the cost-effectiveness.
The current facilities thus represent a snapshot of what is available at this time in the HPC field with none of the systems being at the forefront but each being a respectable example of its class. Together they allow us to provide useful facilities to many different research groups while ensuring that we are not left behind in any area. As technology changes we will continue to enhance the different facilities as appropriate to the research needs of the University and industry.
Courses
Advanced Research Computing has run courses in previous years covering various aspects of HPC and the centre. The courses available are:
- Introduction to Parallel Computing (includes an intro. to the parallel farm)
- Message-Passing Systems
- Introduction to fortran90 and HPF
- Introduction to the NEC SX-4 (including NQS)
- Program Optimization on the SX-4
Currently Advanced Research Computing is developing self-paced instruction modules based on some of these, as the small number of users has led to us not offering the courses in 2001. If sufficient numbers of people ask for one of these courses to be presented we will do so.
Further information about HPC facilities and services at the University, and the Advanced Research Computing section, can be found at:
http://www.hpc.unimelb.edu.au/
The ARC section is always happy to talk with postgraduate students and discuss how the facilities and services available may be used for your research.