High Performance Computing (HPC)
The ZIM operates a compute cluster for High Performance Computing (HPC) for the UP and supports members of the University of Potsdam (UP) in using the supercomputer system of the North German High Performance Computing Network (HLRN) resp. the National High Performance Computing (NHR).
The UP-owned compute cluster is accessible under the hostname "login1.hpc.uni-potsdam.de". It is a cluster of
redundant head nodes,
- redundant fileservers with connection to the ZIM-SAN
- at least 12 compute nodes with current CPU architecture, several of them with GPUs (3 Nvidia V100)
- all nodes are connected via a fast Infiniband network
The file systems are accessible from the head nodes and all compute nodes. The data on the scratch file systems are not backed up by us, so the users are responsible for backing up data that is needed for a longer period of time.
The distribution of the computing jobs to the nodes is done by the job and resource scheduler "SLURM". Direct user access to the computing nodes without job or resource allocation is not possible.
News
The user documentation can be found on these pages: https://docs.hpc.uni-potsdam.de/
These can only be accessed from the university network.
Dashboards: https://monitor.hpc.uni-potsdam.de
Scratch-Storage: The currently limited scratch storage /work will be expanded by approx. 50TB to enable the efficient processing of data-intensive jobs. The expansion will cause a downtime. Further information will be provided in time via the mail distribution list.
First steps:https://docs.hpc.uni-potsdam.de/overview/first_steps.html
Terms for new users of the compute cluster
- Get an ssh client for your local machine (if you don't have it already), and generate a key pair in the format ed25519, e.g. "ssh-keygen -t ed25519".
- To unlock access, log into Account.UP and navigate to the Other→ High Performance Computing page, where you can enter your SSH key (as well as optionally join a workgroup).
- On the HPC cluster, SLURM is used as a job and resource scheduler. We will be happy to answer questions about its use at hpc-serviceuuni-potsdampde.