Application for access to the Notur high-performance computing facilities

These pages contain detailed information on how to apply for access to the national supercomputer facilities that are managed by the Notur project.

   1. National versus local access to the computing facilities
   2. Access to the national part of computing facilities
   3. Access to the local part of computing facilities

Notur is the Norwegian High Performance Computing consortium funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). Notur has been given the task of coordinating and developing the national high-end computing infrastructure for computational science. The computer resources are hosted and operated by the university partners NTNU, UiB, UiO and UiT. UNINETT Sigma is the coordinating partner. A main task of the Notur project is to provide adequate computing services for research and education. More information about the Notur project can be found here.

1. National versus local access to the computing facilities

For each facility in Notur, the total available resources (measured in processor core hours) are divided into an RCN ('national') part and a university ('local') part. The university where a facility is located has therefore a part of the resources that is allocated for purposes that are decided by the university (e.g., collaborators or research that is strategic to that university).

• Individuals and groups at NTNU, UiB, UiO and UiT that wish to have access to the local facility, may apply for computing time on either the national or local part of that facility. Applicants must evaluate what is most appropriate.
• Individuals and groups at NTNU, UiB, UiO and UiT that wish to have access to a facility that is hosted by another organization, normally apply for computing time on the national part of that facility.
• Individuals and groups from other organizations normally apply for computing time on the national part of one or more facilities.

Applications for allocations on the national part are handled by the Resource Allocation Committee (RFK) which is appointed by the Research Council of Norway.

2. Access to the national part of computing facilities

1. Verify that you are eligible to apply.
2. Apply for a project allocation on the computing facilities. The application is evaluated by the Resource Allocation Committee.
3. An application that gets a positive evaluation receives a project allocation on one or more facilities. If this is the first allocation given to the project, the project responsible must specify which users are allowed to use the allocation. This can be done by sending an email to sigma@uninett.no. For each user, the project responsible must specify:
   • Person name
   • User account. This must be an existing account.
   • Starting date. This is the first day that the account should be connected to the project.
   • End date. This is the last day that the account should be connected to the project.
   • The list of facilities on which the user account must be connected to the project. This list must be a subset of the facilities on which the project has an allocation.
   The project responsible must keep this list of users up-to-date and inform UNINETT Sigma about any changes (e.g., people changing job). The project responsible must also inform about prolongation of the period that a user account must be connected to the project.

Note: Users that do not yet have a user account must first apply for a user account.

3. Access to the local part of computing facilities

• NTNU: njord
• UiB: hexagon, fimm
• UiO: titan
• UiT: stallo

Contact UNINETT Sigma for information that you do not find on these pages.