Written by Lars Nondal

High Performance Computing (HPC). If you ever find yourself in need of extra computing power or extra storage, read on!

In the most recent newsletter, we outlined five new types of High-Performance Computing (HPC) services available for researchers at Danish universities.

The easiest-to-use and the most accessible HPC service at CBS is UCloud, a so-called ‘Interactive HPC service’. In UCloud, you work with software such as MATLAB, STATA, RStudio and JupyterLab in a graphic user interface in the same way as you would on your desk- or laptop computer. UCloud is available to all CBS researchers with CBS login credentials. UCloud computing power is provided by extensive HPC computing facilities that are hosted by other Danish universities, including ABACUS (SDU) and CLAAUDIA (AAU).​
 

New HPC & Data Science Support Team member

Please welcome our brand new HPC & Data Science Supporter to the stage! We want to take this opportunity to introduce Milos Kovacevic, our new RDM Support colleague. Milos has a background in industry, a BSc in Electronics and Computer Engineering from DTU, and an MSc in Bioinformatics with a focus on Machine Learning from KU. He will be the key person in our efforts to promote the use of HPC and cloud-based HPC resources in research and teaching at CBS.

UCloud in your research
In UCloud, all users are initially granted an allowance of free resources for use in their personal ‘My Workspace’ (up to 1000 DKK worth of computing and 150 DKK worth of storage). ´My Workspace´ does not cover sophisticated system functionalities.

You apply for additional resources as a ‘Project’ by clicking the ‘Apply for resources’ button on the UCloud dashboard. Working in ‘Project’ mode gives access to increased functionality and is especially useful when working on collaborative projects. Different roles can be assigned to project members (PI, Admin, and Users). PIs and Admins can define access permissions to project files, folders, etc.
For the remainder of 2021, CBS has plenty of resources at our disposal, so you should definitively not hesitate to apply for computing resources for your research projects this fall, even if your project will be running for more than 1-2 years. 

At present, 63 different applications are available in UCloud, including STATA, MATLAB, RStudio, JupyterLab, PyTorch, etc.
Click for a complete list of applications.

Without getting too technical: When you run a job in UCloud, you have the choice of a number of different ‘machine types’ and can chose how many CPUs you want to use. Depending on the size and characteristics of your job and your personal preferences/tradeoffs, you can use anything from 1 CPU up to 63 CPUs.

UCloud for CBS Students
UCloud is also available to CBS Students – as long as they sign in with their CBS e-mail (@student.cbs.dk). Students also have access to no-fee resources (up to 1000 DKK worth of computing and 150 DKK worth of storage) in ‘My Workspace’. However, UCloud does not allow students to apply for extra resources as ‘Projects’.

Most likely, the no-fee resources in ‘My Workspace’ (up to 1000 DKK worth of computing and 150 DKK worth of storage) will be sufficient for most student papers.  However, a portion of the resources available at CBS will be dedicated to master students with extraordinary computing/storage needs. In these cases, a CBS researcher (most likely a supervisor) applies on behalf of a student – and then ‘invites’ the student to participate in the project.

Please direct all questions to Milos Kovacevik or the RDM Support Team