SIO Computing Committee Update

11/19/2007

Several issues which might interest you guys have been discussed during the last SIO computing committee.

Supercomputer time for students

If you are running a computationally expensive code, be aware of the Academic Associates Program (AAP) which provides University of California (UC) researchers and students free access to computational resources at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).

AAP allocates service units (= SUs // computing time) for quick start/ development/ smaller jobs only. Typical allocations are 1000 SUs or so. Grad students would need to apply under the sponsorship of a researcher at Scripps, write a short blurb to Steve Piper ( scpiper@ucsd.edu , the SDSC coordinator at Scripps). This will get you his OK immediately if SUs are available. SIO gets approximately 11000 service units (SUs) on the supercomputers per year.

AAP provides also workshops in order to explain how to use the SDSC resources.

Note that SDSC resources are designed to take full advantage of parallel computing. You will need to modify your code to take full advantage of it, which can be not justified for small projects.

Useful links:

http://www.sdsc.edu/us/aap/
http://www.sdsc.edu/

This info will be posted on the siocomputing.ucsd.edu website, which is being currently build.

Finally, a quick note mentioning the Center for Observations and Prediction at Scripps (COMPAS) who has got a cluster of the same name. This facility is a shared resource among PI's who contribute to it's upkeep and administration. Compas's Director is Bruce Cornuelle and its System Manager Caroline Papadopolous. They try to be accommodating to computing projects for students, as long as the application runs well on the cluster. The resource is however near capacity and you might therefore better try AAP/SDSC first.

Poster printing

If you want to print a large format poster, the situation is currently twofold :

• You are part of IGPP. Then you're lucky as you can use one of IGPP's printers
• You are not part of IGPP. Then you need to use either:
  -- ACS (upper campus, $0.75 per sq. ft. per color C/M/Y/K )
  -- or Imprint (upper campus, $5 to $10 per sq. ft.)
  -- or Kinko's.

The news is that a large-format poster printer as an SIO-wide resource could be made available ! The new IGPP basement server room would be the location for such a joint-use facility. If you think that this is a good idea, please let us know and we will make sure the opinion of the students will be transmitted to the committee, next meeting.