National compute resources

What do we mean by "national compute resources"?

If your project has needs that may not be met by computing resources that are available through NC State and you don't currently have the budget to move your workflow to the commercial cloud, you may consider exploring one of a growing group of nationally available computing and data resources.

These managed computational resources are supported by dedicated funding, and are designed for broad access by the research community. They are often available at no cost to the researcher or research group, although many require an (often brief) application.

The RFS can help you get started using these resources. Contact us

How can these resources be used?

One example use case centers on a researcher using TensorFlow to train a neural network. Using NC State's local cluster (Hazel) wasn't working optimally; it would take 6-8 hours to run and the researcher wanted to experiment with many different hyperparameters, which needed more GPU power than Hazel had available. The researcher was able to move his parameter tuning effort to Jetstream2, a cloud-based, on-demand computing and data analysis resource run by Indiana University. Once the correct hyperparameters were identified, the researcher was then able to move his work back to NC State's cluster and continue training his model.

ACCESS

The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem Services and Support (ACCESS) program is funded by the National Science Foundation to help researchers and educators use some of the most advanced computing systems in the U.S.

Learn more about ACCESS

Campus Champions

Campus Champions are a network of cyberinfrastructure professionals dedicated to facilitating computational and data-intensive research and helping researchers find and use the technologies that best fit their needs at whatever scale necessary.

Campus Champions work closely with researchers and the ACCESS community to help investigators onboard to their work to ACCESS resources. The Research Facilitation ServiceNC State has several Campus Champions on staff who can help you obtain start-up allocations to explore the various resources and platforms with no barrier to entry.

Contact the RFS to learn more about Campus Champions.

Other resources

There are resources outside the ACCESS ecosystem that support computing needs like advanced computing (HPC and/or accelerated computing), networking, cloud computing, and high throughput computing. Contact the RFS to learn more or schedule a consultation.