HPC Computing Resource
The High Performance Computing environment consists of high-end systems used for executing complex number crunching applications for research . Griffith users have access to the following systems:
Awoonga cluster
QRIScloud Special Offering
Gowonda cluster (deprecated)
Microsoft Azure cloud
Awoonga Cluster
Griffith has partnered with QCIF which operates the Awoonga HTC cluster (1000 cores). Griffith users can request an account on Awoonga cluster using this link to create an account on the awoonga cluster. Please click the link "Register to use Awoonga”. The number of cores available to a single job is limited to 24 on one node. It is not possible to create an MPI job using multiple nodes. Hence all mpi jobs should be limited to 24 cores on a single node. It is a Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) system having a maximum of 24 cores per node and sharing the same memory and is managed by one operating system. The home directory and software directory is shared across all nodes.
Ref: https://www.qriscloud.org.au/support/qriscloud-documentation/92-awoonga-user-guide
In general, you have a question or problem regarding Awoonga, please raise a new QRIScloud support request by emailing support@qriscloud.org.au. For further support options, please visit https://www.qriscloud.org.au/support.
QRIScloud Special Offering
QRIScloud offers special nodes to Griffith users.
Flashlite node
This is a large memory cluster named Flashlite (large memory and fast disks in a non-virtualized environment). FlashLite is a research computer that has been designed and optimised for data intensive computing. FlashLite will support applications that need large amounts of primary memory along with very high performance secondary memory. Each of the 68 nodes of FlashLite is equipped with 512 Gbytes of main memory and 4.8TB of solid-state drive (SSD). The operating software supports various programming paradigms including message passing (MPI), shared memory (OpenMP), and virtual symmetric multiprocessor (vSMP). The vSMP mode aggregates nodes to produce virtual machines with very large "main" memory address space.
Large memory node
QRIScloud operates a small number of compute nodes that can accommodate instances with up to 1TB memory. These can be made available in blocks of time of two weeks as instances with up to 60 vCPUs and 900Gb of memory. Instances can be provisioned with large storage volumes to hold working data.
GPU node
QRIScloud operates a small number of compute nodes that contain a Tesla K20m GPU. These can be made available in blocks of time of two weeks as instances. Instances can be provisioned with storage volumes to hold working data.
Elastic compute
Normal Nectar resources are often in short supply, leading to problems with launching instances. QRIScloud has set aside some limited capacity to allow users to create instances with large numbers of vCPUs with a relatively short (up to 7 days) lifetime (elastic compute).
To request a special node, please follow this link and select "Use specialised compute"
In general, you have a question or problem regarding special nodes on QRIScloud, please raise a new QRIScloud support request by emailing support@qriscloud.org.au. For further support options, please visithttps://www.qriscloud.org.au/support.
Ref: https://www.qriscloud.org.au/index.php/services/compute#FlashLite
https://www.qriscloud.org.au/index.php/services/compute
Gowonda cluster (deprecated)
This cluster is being deprecated. However, if you need to use licensed software that is not available on awoonga and /QRIScloud (e.g gaussian, comsol, etc) or need to run mpi jobs spanning multiple nodes, you may request an account on this cluster. In general, if you have any support related issues on this cluster, you may open a ticket by following this link.
Microsoft Azure cloud
This is currently work in progress. As soon as it is available, we will announce it here.