Bede, The N8’s new high performance GPU computing platform, is now open for users. Bede is the N8’s IBM Power9 + Nvidia GPU-based high-performance computing (HPC) platform. Unlike traditional x86 platforms, Bede is GPU-based and makes use of NVIDIA’s NV Link high-bandwidth interconnects to move tensor outputs between the GPU and system memory. This unique architecture is ideally suited to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. Bede will also be able to work.. Read more »

Last year we asked for your input — how should we spend RLP funds to develop our computational resources on a year-by-year basis? On those recommendations we are procuring: more GPUs some very high memory (RAM) compute nodes more capacity for the CSF and more Cloud-based resources We are starting the work for next year’s RLP investment early! What do you believe we should procure, to enable your research? Please come along to one of.. Read more »

A new computational resource is now available at The University of Manchester! It comprises 4096 cores of Intel Skylake all with low-latency, high-bandwidth, Infiniband interconnect. This new resource is intended to replace Polaris (the N8-HPC cluster) which was decommissioned last July. Our share of Polaris was about 750 cores, so this is a big compute capacity increase! Initially the HPC Pool will support jobs of up to 1024 cores. These resources are suitable for true.. Read more »

This article describes the existing Research IT Virtual Machine service and outlines our planned developments. For more information, please email its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk Existing Research Virtual Machine (VM) Service (RVMS) IT Services already offer a research VM service. Through this service, VMs are offered to research groups: with a relatively low specification, such as one or two CPU cores, four GB RAM and 25 GB local storage; on which researchers may have admin/root privileges. A standard Scientific.. Read more »

The Research Infrastructure Team If you have any questions about the items below, please contact the RI team at its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk CSF Refresh The Computational Shared Facility (CSF) is the University flagship computational resource. It started life four years ago and is now running 1000s of jobs for over 650 users from 35 research groups representing all faculties. The CSF is getting a New Year refresh. This will secure the service for years to come. The.. Read more »

24 new Ivy Bridge-based compute nodes have been added to the CSF, funded by the UoM Revolving Green Fund. Each new node has 16 CPU cores and 64 GB RAM. 12 further Ivy Bridge compute nodes are on order and expected in few weeks.

The CUDA installation on CSF has now been upgraded to version 5.5.22 (previous versions are still available). All GPU nodes have had the Nvidia driver upgraded to version 319.37 to support CUDA 5. This version of CUDA includes the Nvidia Visual Profiler (nvvp) as well as the usual compiler tools, numerical libraries and sample codes. CUDA 5 is also supported by the PGI 13.6 compiler available on the CSF. Please see the CSF GPU documentation.. Read more »

A recent procurement has significantly increased the size of the CSF. See the CSF Service News page for full details.

A loan from the RGF will be used over the summer to refresh about 50% of the hardware in Redqueen, the CSF’s predecessor, run by RI. The same loan is to be used to replace one of the many small research group-owned HPC clusters on campus with some new hardware for the CSF. More RGF funds will be available to replace such old HPC clusters in the coming months. If you are the owner of.. Read more »