What is this service?
Advanced Computing provides computing infrastructure for solving computational resource-demanding problems: Supercomputer Supek and the cloud computing platform Vrančić. Cluster Isabella, HTC Cloud (High-Throughput Computing) computing environment, and the VCL (Virtual Computing Lab) are also available for researchers as part of this service.
Who can use this service?
This service can be used by every natural person fluffing requirements stated in the document Rules of service use:
How can you become a user?
You can submit your application request on this web page: https://computing.srce.hr.
Advanced computing applies state-of-the-art computing infrastructure to help researchers solve resource-demanding problems in various scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, climate modelling, seismology and many others.
Resources
Supercomputer Supek provides researchers High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure. HPC enables the execution of resource-demanding applications via a large number of CPU cores, graphical processors, RAM, storage and high-speed network. Supek is based on HPE Cray technology and consists of 8384 processor cores, 81 GPUs, and 32 TB of working memory providing a power of 1.25 PFLOPS, which makes it the first petascale supercomputer in Croatia. It is located in the area of the newly built data centre at University Campus Borongaj in Zagreb. Most of the servers are housed in just one HPE Cray EX2500 cabinet, which is a fully integrated supercomputer. The advantage of this system is that 100% of the heat is removed by Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) which makes it extremely energy efficient. Storage system is HPE ClusterStor 1000 with 580 TB usable capacity and measured bandwidth of 238 GB/s for writing and 450 GB/s for reading.
| CPU servers | GPU servers | Servers with large storage capacity | |
| Total nodes | 52 | 20 | 2 |
| Total CPUs | 6656 | 1280 | 256 |
| Total GPUs | 80 | ||
| Processor | 2 x AMD Epyc 7763 2,45 GHz | 1 x AMD Epyc 7763 2,45 GHz | 2 x AMD Epyc 7763 2,45 GHz |
| CPU | 128 | 64 | 128 |
| Working memory | 256 GB | 512 GB | 4 TB |
| GPU | 4 x NVIDIA A100 with 40 GB memory |
Cloud computing platform Vrančić is intended for a wider set of user applications and systems which require a specific programming environment and significant processor and memory resources. It is useful for researchers who need an adaptable, elastic and versatile computing resource capable of meeting the diverse requirements in different scientific fields. Vrančić is based on OpenStack cloud computing infrastructure providing 11520 processor cores, 16 GPUs and 57 TB of working memory.
| CPU servers | GPU servers | Servers with large storage capacity | |
| Total nodes | 86 | 4 | 2 |
| Total CPUs | 11008 | 256 | 256 |
| Total GPUs | 16 | ||
| Processor | 2 x AMD Epyc 7713 2,0 GHz | 1 x AMD Epyc 7713 2,0 GHz | 2 x AMD Epyc 7713 2,0 GHz |
| CPU | 128 | 64 | 128 |
| Working memory | 512 GB | 512 GB | 2 TB |
| GPU | 4 x NVIDIA A100 with 40 GB memory |
Other available resources:
Cluster Isabella provides High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure which enables researchers to run parallel applications that require large amount of CPU cores, graphical processors, RAM and storage, interconnected with high-speed, low latency network. Today, Isabella consists of 135 worker nodes with 3100 processor cores and 12 GPUs.
HTC Cloud provides a cloud computing platform enabling users to deploy virtual machines and applications that require significant compute and storage resources. HTC Cloud provides flexibility in using and running various operating systems and applications, scaling machines on-demand and creating custom network topologies. It is ideal for applications not suitable for HPC clusters – ones that require higher level of flexibility and user interaction. HTC Cloud currently provides 2.400 virtual CPU cores on 600 CPU cores and 150 TB of storage. JupyterLab Services is a service deployed on HTC Cloud that enables interactive coding and execution of applications, data analysis and virtualization in popular programming languages such as Python, R and Julia.
VCL is a cloud computing platform enabling users to reserve virtual machines or laboratories with predefined or custom sets of applications and remotely access it over the Internet. VCL is not intended for computationally demanding applications.
Support
Support includes consulting for choosing the best-fit resource based on users' needs, assistance with setting up the environment, updates for existing applications, installation and optimization of new scientific applications, as well as assistance in running applications.
Education through customized self-paced and hands-on workshops is also part of this service. The workshops are intended for new users who want to get to know the cluster environment and the basics of the job management system. In addition to general tasks such as job submitting, running specific scientific applications is also demonstrated.
History
Advanced computing in SRCE started with the first cluster Dgrid with 8 single-CPU nodes and cluster distribution Rocks. It was established in 2002. for the needs of integrating Croatia into European project DataGrid led by CERN with the main goal of building a grid for large-scale storage and analysis of data collected by LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment.
Dgrid evolves into HPC cluster Isabella on May 8th 2002. – a shared resource of all scientists in Croatia. Since then, Isabella went through over 10 upgrades until it reached its current structure in 2018.
