Clemson University Allocation Policy for High-Performance and High-Throughput Computing Resources

Executive Summary

This HPC/HTC Allocation Policy describes the allocation procedures for access to CCIT's high-performance computing (HPC) and high-throughput computing (HTC) resources, including CCIT clusters, condominium machines (nodes in CCIT clusters contributed by faculty with funding for equipment), and standalone clusters contributed by faculty with equipment funding. Allocations of other technological resources may be covered in the future, as they become available.

Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to ensure that Clemson's high-performance and high-throughput resources are allocated fairly and efficiently among all Clemson University faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and research staff with a legitimate use for them.

Policy

Access to high-performance computing resources will be provided upon contribution of resources or upon approval of an application:

• Contribute cluster resources. Owners of cluster resources are automatically allocated up to the capacity of their contributions.
• Collaborate with a contributor. Owners of cluster resources may sub-allocate their contributed allocations at their discretion.
• Apply through the process described here.

First-time applications for a relatively small amount of resources can be immediately approved by the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or by a system administrator designated to do so by the CTO. Renewals and applications involving significant resources should be approved by the Computational Advisory Team (CAT).

Applicants may not use HPC or HTC resources for commercial purposes or for activities that violate the university's policy on acceptable use of computing resources.

At this time, access to high-throughput resources (i.e., Condor) is available with no application process required.

Communications (who needs to know, who does it affect or apply to)

This policy applies to all Clemson University faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and research staff.

General Guidelines

Resources: Applicants designate a cluster by name and request CPU time (measured in node-hours) and storage space (measured in gigabytes (GB)) on the selected cluster. The amount of work that can be accomplished in a node-hour depends on the cluster being requested. Descriptions of the available clusters, including information about the computational capabilities of each cluster's nodes, are available at http://citi.clemson.edu/hpc.

Researchers providing access to grant-funded HPC nodes to the community receive priority access to their own equipment or the equivalent in CPU time and storage.

Types of Resource Requests: If the application requests resources under the limit on node-hours and GB specified on the application form, the application is considered small and can be granted administratively by the Chief Technology Officer or his/her designated representative. Larger allocations are reviewed by the Computational Advisory Team (CAT). CAT membership shall include at a minimum, a representative from each college and PSA, plus CCIT members designated by the Chief Technology Officer. Applications for access to standalone clusters are also reviewed by the cluster owner. Small grant requests can be made at any time. The review panel will meet bimonthly to consider large requests.

CAT does not evaluate the quality of the proposed research objective. The evaluation considers the appropriateness of the requested resource and the size of the request to the resources available at Clemson. If the request is deemed inappropriate, CAT will offer advice to the requestor on how to revise the request or how to route the request to resources external to the Clemson campus, such as TeraGrid.

Resource requests may be made in any of the following categories:

• Instructional and Coursework. Allocations for coursework automatically include registered students as investigators. A single allocation should be requested for the total resources to be used.
• Creative Inquiry. Undergraduate students engaged in research or discovery activities under faculty or staff supervision may request small allocations in this class.
• Start-up. New, small allocation requests by graduate students, faculty, and staff fall in this class. These requests are generally for proof-of-concept projects that are expected to lead to larger requests in the future.
• Research and Discovery. New large requests and large or small renewals fall in this class.

Priority Users: Researchers who provide nodes to the community clusters or who make standalone clusters available to the community automatically receive priority access to their own nodes up to the available capacity or the equivalent in CPU time and storage. In addition, they may apply separately for access to additional community cluster resources through the process documented here. Node-hours on contributed nodes that are not used by the contributing investigator are available to other members of the community through the same process.

For information purposes, CCIT requests that contributors submit the HPC Resource Allocation Request form, even if they plan to use only their contributed nodes. Applications requesting only access to the applicant's own resources are granted automatically.

Application Form: The application form can be found at http://citi.clemson.edu/allocation_request. (Note: You must be logged into the website with your Clemson userid and password to access this form.) The form contains fields for the following information:

• Principal Investigator's name, department, address, phone, and userid. If the principal investigator is a student, the faculty/staff sponsor's name, department, address, phone, and userid.
• Other investigators' names, departments, and userids. (For course allocations, all registered students are automatically included as other investigators.)
• Class of request (see “Types of Resource Requests” above) and whether the allocation is for a new project or a continuation.
• Title of project.
• Brief (one page) description of the proposed work. This can be entered as text or attached as a PDF document. Include a brief description of the project's overall objective and the nature of the parallel computations to be carried out.
• Resources requested, including cluster name, number of node-hours on the selected cluster, number of gigabytes of storage.
• Results of prior CCIT support. Include citations of published articles, funded grants, etc. Include PDF versions of articles where appropriate. (Submission of information about articles, grants, etc., is appreciated, even when it does not accompany resource requests.)

Final Report: Within six weeks of the expiration of a resource grant, the applicant is expected to fill out a final report form, located on the Web at http://citi.clemson.edu/allocation_final_report. (Note: You must be logged into the website with your Clemson userid and password to access this form.) The form contains fields for the following information:

• Principal Investigator's contact information.
• Project title.
• Brief description of activities carried out and results.
• Citations for any publications, theses, dissertations, or working papers produced or in preparation.

In addition to the final report, CCIT requests that faculty users acknowledge their access grants in their annual Faculty Activity System reports and in any working papers or publications describing the results of investigations using community resources.

Definitions

High-performance computing (HPC) – computing problems which require lots of time and/or data, and which involve a non-trivial amount of communication among subtasks. CCIT HPC resources include the CCIT clusters, condominium machines (nodes in CCIT clusters contributed by faculty with funding for equipment), and standalone clusters contributed by faculty with equipment funding.

High-throughput computing (HTC) – computing problems which require lots of time and/or data, but which need little to no communication among subtasks. CCIT HTC resources include the Condor system for background processing of a large number of independent tasks on PCs and workstations across campus.

Computational Advisory Team (CAT) – the committee that reviews renewals and applications for a significant amount of resources.

Condominium clusters – clusters composed of resources owned by different faculty members and administered by CCIT with the provision that spare cycles are made available to applicants.

References and Related Documents

Applying for HPC resources
http://citi.clemson.edu/allocation_request (Note: You must be logged into the website with your Clemson userid and password to access this form.)

Cluster capability information
http://citi.clemson.edu/hpc

Condor information
http://citi.clemson.edu/htc

Final Report Form
http://citi.clemson.edu/allocation_final_report (Note: You must be logged into the website with your Clemson userid and password to access this form.)

Revisions

Initial draft, 8/4/08; revised 9/4/08; revised 1/5/09.

Approvals

TBD.