Research Computing

We aim to provide update computing facility and to serve the university researchers with optimal solutions. Our objectives are:

To provide Research Computing services for university researchers
To install and tune applications for departmental users
To liaison and collaborate with other departments to build the University research infrastructure

Available to

Staff

Service Charge and Application

Charged service; application required, please write to ITSC Service Desk (Research Computing Team).

Service Availability

Office hours

1. Research Computing Platform

Servers

Types of Computing Nodes

System Configuration

High core frequency 12-core node

Dell R620 Server

Intel Dual E5-2643v2 3.5 GHz (6-core), 64 GB Memory

16-core nodes

Two Dell R620 servers

Intel Dual E5-2640v2 2.0 GHz (8-core), 64 GB Memory

Eight IBM X3550M4 servers

Intel Dual Xeon E5-2660 2.2 GHz (8-core), 64 GB Memory

Disk Storage System

EMC Isilon X200 Scale-Out Storage, 40 TB for this platform
IBM System Storage DS3512, 15 TB for this platform

Network Switches

Cisco Nexus 5000 series switches
Cisco Catalyst 4900 series switch
Dell Networking N4000 series switches

2. Research Computing Software

We provide free-installation services of application coming with authorized license. The following lists the language compilers, parallel tools, libraries and popular applications which have installed for previous users. Most of them are being run by the researchers.

Names	Language Compilers / Parallel Tools / Libraries
Language Compilers	GNU and Intel /C/C++ and Fortran compilers;Java compiler.
Parallel Tools	OpenMPI, MPICH, OpenMP
Libraries	Intel Math Kernel Library, Sci/Math Libraries
Resource Manager and scheduler	Torque and Maui

Focus Areas	Applications / Codes
Astronomy /Particle Physics	Gadget
Automated Docking Tool	Autodock
Computational Chemistry	Gaussian 09
Genomics	BLAST
Life Science	Bowtie, Miranda
Life Science – Molecular Dynamics	AMBER
Mathamatics	Matlab
Statistical Computing and graphics	R, Parallel R, SAS 9.4
Weather / Climate	CESM, WRF, CMAX, GEOS-Chem

3. Fee-Charging Research Computing Services

These research computing services are not supported by the central block grant and are therefore subject to fee charging. Based on availability of manpower and computing resources, Research Computing Team will endeavor to provide the services on request.

Self-Financed Computing Services

It is for the researchers who acquire Self-financed computing resources.

Research Computing Team entertains the researchers who enquire or request to:

purchase computing resources such as CPU time, disk storage and memory allocation; and
purchase server hosting service.

Professional Services

It is for the researchers who acquire professional services for computing system configuration planning, acquisition support and implementation project.

Research Computing Team entertains the researchers who enquire or request to:

plan and acquire department owned computing resources; and
install and setup and administer such computing resources.

Advisory Services

It is for the researchers who request advisory services about computing system

Research Computing Team entertains the researchers who request advisory services such as consultation, use of software, training, project discussion, budgeting, and etc.