Illustration: DeIC
By  Lars Nondal

Many CBS researchers (in fact 25% according to a 2019 survey) worry that in the future they will not have access to enough computing power for analyzing and computing ever-growing amounts of data, central to many social science research questions.

If you have ever found yourself without sufficient computing power on your CBS computer (stand-alone or laptop), you may have attempted to gain access to one of the supercomputers at DTU/Risø (Computerome) or SDU (Abacus). History, however, tells us that only a handful of CBS researchers have in fact done that. DeIC, the Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation, has counted how many scientific publications from Danish universities between 2015 and 2019 were based on the use of one the Danish HPC facilities. From a total of 835 articles only 2 involved CBS authors!

There may be several explanations for this. Maybe social science researchers generally do not need the same degree of computing power as STEM researchers. Perhaps they are of the opinion that because access to large supercomputers historically has been both expensive and difficult, the pay-off is simply too small. Or perhaps it is down to the fact that software programs and codes need to be rewritten.

Whatever the reasons, things are now changing – and for the better, we hope. In November 2020, DeIC announced (press release, in Danish only) that a number of new national HPC services will be available for researchers at Danish Universities. Without getting too technical, they plan to implement four different types of HPC:

  1. Interactive HPC
  2. Throughput HPC
  3. Large Memory HPC

Accelerated HPC & Capability HPC.

In the past, CBS researchers have been mostly interested in Interactive HPC (Type-1), predominantly to be able to use well-known software programs or packages with graphical user interfaces (mostly Windows-based).
 

The Interactive HPC service, UCloud, is already up and running. It is provided by a consortium of universities, SDU, AAU, and AU. The SDU computer Abacus and the AAU computer CLAAUDIA are the backbone of the service.

“For type 1, the focus is on interactive computing resources and easy access for new users. In the national context, this type is a new type of plant that is aimed at users who do not have much experience with calculations on large plants. Typically, when the individual researcher's own computer is not sufficient due to lack of computing power, storage or memory” (DeIC).

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