Deakin's high-performance computing facility

Through membership with National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), Deakin has access to their peak facility for computational needs. We have an application process to access this resource - more information follows.

The Deakin University NCI Resource Allocation Committee (DUNRAC) will allocate a total of approximately 3 million service units (SU) (aka core-hours), of compute time for the calendar year on the NCI peak system, Gadi.

Application specifics

Preparation

Who can access?

The NCI Deakin partner share is available for use by researchers (for HDR candidates, through their supervisors) at Deakin University. All access is subject to conditions of use and other policies, including a requirement to acknowledge NCI in publications.

Deakin will facilitate access via an application process aligned with the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS). An evaluation committee will meet quarterly to review and approve application to Deakin's NCI discretionary share.

This committee has been temporarily suspended due to low demand. It may be re-instated at a later point. Your application for the time being will be considered under an expedited review, with requests for large compute time allocations requiring suitable justification.

New users

New to NCI

You will need a current NCI user account to register a new project. If you do not have an account, follow the procedure on the NCI user registration page to create a user account.

New to Gadi? HPC

If you're having trouble deciding how much compute power, e.g. number of service units (SUs), you need or whether or not NCI's Gadi is suitable for your projects, a discretionary allocation of 1,000 SUs can be made to evaluate the suitability of NCI's facilities for your research. You can request a consultation via the services for researchers catalogue (compute capabilities). Our eResearch team will be in contact to help you to get started.

Project evaluation: Criteria

Research quality

Merit of the research.
Potential to generate new knowledge.
Originality, ie. Is this a new project or existing project with new questions to answer?
- Experience of the project team:
  - When postdoctoral fellow or researcher, experience of the applicant will be considered.
  - When a postgraduate student, supervisor considered.

Computational assessment

Appropriateness of the computational resource, e.g. if the problem is embarrassingly parallel, then other options might be more suitable
Will the project use the facility efficiently?
Will stated research outcomes be reached?
Will over requests be required?
How confident are the time estimations?
- Reasonable of the level of resources requested
  - Relative to the amount that Deakin has available
  - Needed to make adequate progress in the proposed research program

Apply now

Before

Ensure that you possesses an NCI User Account account. Otherwise, please follow the procedure on the How to Access NCI page to create a user account.

During your application

Log in to the NCI Application System, Mancini, at https://my.nci.org.au/mancini, and then click on the ‘Propose a project‘ (available once you login) to initiate your new project proposal.

Note: Please ensure choose the 'Deakin' allocation scheme in your project proposal.

After

Upon approval, you will receive a confirmation e-mail that contains your project code and user credentials.

Once a project has initially set-up, the Deakin lead researcher will be responsible for assigning researchers and performing any other administrative tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the NCI Gadi specifications?

Gadi is located in Canberra (at ANU)
Gadi specifications and user guide
10Gbps shared network connectivity between Deakin and ANU (where NCI is located)
Alignment with NeCTAR Research Cloud at ANU and RDSI node
NCI will bring an enhanced delivery in both capacity computing (i.e. number of large jobs) and capability computing (i.e. enabling massive highly parallel jobs)

What are the network latency implication between Deakin and NCI?

Any bottle necks will be at the Deakin end. It is something for the researcher to consider (or recognise) if they intend to move large data files around. If you are transferring data from your desktop/laptop and are connected to a network point in the wall, you will be using a 1Gbps connection. If you are moving data from a server in the data centre, then that will move over the WAN at its full capacity - currently that is a 10Gbps connection to AARNet.

How large a capacity has Deakin acquired?

At present, approximately 3 million core hours per year. They will be allocated at around 650,000 core hours per quarter. This total amount is under review and may be subject to expansion in a needs driven basis.

What are the Deakin University NCI Resource Allocation Committee terms of reference?

The Deakin University NCI Resource Allocation Committee (DUNRAC) terms of reference as located in this document (PDF, 82.9KB)

Please contact Deakin eResearch (eresearch-compute@deakin.edu.au) if you have any questions.