When is HPC Right for Me?

You should consider using HPC resources whenever you have a research computation need that needs more computing power than your local device.

• If the software has parallelization capabilities (can use more than one CPU), you can expect faster computation compared to computation performed on your laptop or workstation. 
• Moreover, if the software can use the GPU – which is very typical for AI workflows - you can expect significant improvements using top notch GPU cards available on Hellbender cluster.
• Even software without parallelization capabilities can be run very efficiently on the HPC cluster.

High throughput computation - submitting thousand of small jobs at the same time - is a common HPC use in many research fields.

• The software must be available for Linux operating system – Hellbender cluster cannot support Windows or MacOS based software.
• Commercial software licenses must be purchased for the intended HPC cluster use.
• Data must be Data Classification Level 1 or 2 to use on Hellbender.
• Your computation must be able to start and finish within two days – or you should be able to save a checkpoint file in that time frame from which you can continue a new two-day calculation job.
  • Hellbender Investors can extend their computations up to 28 days. The 28 days computation is only possible if the job starts soon after the maintenance has finished, and before the next maintenance window starts. All jobs are stopped during maintenance.
• Your data must fit within your storage capacity limit:
  • Hellbender General Accounts have 500 GB of disk storage in their data directory (located at /home/$USER/data).
  • PI's who request RDE Lab Storage receive 5 TB of disk storage for free – all PI approved members of a lab may use the lab's RDE Storage.
  • Additional storage may be purchased.  Please reach out to itrss@missouri.edu if you need more than 10TB of storage.
• Hellbender undergoes monthly maintenance generally the second Tuesday of every month.  All jobs are stopped during the maintenance window.  Subscribe to the RSS newsletter to keep informed of changes to maintenance windows.

For additional assistance please e-mail itrss@missouri.edu or open a general support ticket via TDX.