The Linux cluster provides computational resources for BC faculty members and their research groups. This page contains information including links on how to get an account on the cluster, and how to use the cluster.

Governance

The use of the cluster is guided by the Cluster Policy Committee. The members of this committee are:

  • Nadia Abuelezam (School of Nursing)
  • Stefano Anzellotti (MCAS – Psychology and Neuroscience, Chair of the committee)
  • Lucas Bao (MCAS - Chemistry)
  • Christopher Baum (MCAS - Economics)
  • David Broido (MCAS - Physics)
  • Siddhartan Govindasamy (MCAS – Engineering Department)
  • Summer Hawkins (School of Social work)
  • Michelle Meyer (MCAS - Biology)
  • Matt Gregas (Director Research Services)
  • Sam Ransbotham (Carroll School of Management)
  • Brian Smith (School of Education)
  • Laura L. Steinberg (Schiller Institute)
  • Emily Prud’hommeaux (MCAS – Computer Science)
  • Scott Cann (Technology Director, ITS)
  • Tom Chiles (Vice Provost for Research).

    If you have comments on cluster policy, please contact researchservices@bc.edu or one of the committee members.

    Research Projects

    We ask each research group to submit a short abstract describing their work using the Linux Cluster. The current projects using the cluster, arranged alphabetically by research group, are:

    Hardware

    Andromeda

    The andromeda cluster was installed in the Fall of 2020 and upgraded in January 2022. In addition to 500 TB of storage, and an interactive node, it has 176 compute nodes with a total of 9792 cores and 7 GPU nodes.

    • 92 compute nodes. Each has 2 24-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 CPU (2.40GHz) sharing 192 GB of memory.
    • 84 compute nodes. Each has 2 32-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8352Y CPU (2.20GHz) sharing 256 GB of memory.
    • 3 GPU nodes. Each with 2 24-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 CPU (2.40GHz) sharing 192 GB and 4 Nvidia V100 GPUs.
    • 4 GPU nodes. Each with 2 32-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8352Y CPU (2.20GHz) sharing 256 GB and 4 Nvidia A100 GPUs.
       

    Siruis

    The sirius cluster was installed in the Summer of 2017 and additional nodes were added in the Summer of 2018 and in January 2019. In addition to 600 TB of storage, and an interactive node, it has 134 nodes with a total of 4,488 cores.

    • 66 compute nodes. Each nodes has two 14-core Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 processors (2.40GHz) sharing 128 GB of memory.
    • 66 compute nodes. Each node has two 20-core Intel Xeon Gold 6148 processors (2.40GHz) sharing 192 GB of memory.
    • 2 nodes with two 20-core Intel Xeon Gold 6148 processors (2.40GHz) sharing 192 GB of memory and 4 Nvida V100 GPUs.
       

    Request a New Linux Cluster Account

    Requests for new Linux accounts must come from a faculty member. We will try for an 8 business-hour turnaround time (after all information has been received), and try to accommodate special requests when accounts are needed sooner. To get a new account, send email to researchservices@bc.edu with the following information:

    1. The name of the faculty member sponsoring the account.
    2. If this is the first account for the faculty member, or if it is a new group, please include a short abstract describing the work on the cluster. This abstract will be displayed on the Research Projects website.
    3. The name of account holder, and their BC username, if applicable.
       

    Once an abstract has been submitted, a faculty member may request accounts for members of their research group. Members of the research group are not restricted to the Boston College community. We will create accounts for collaborators at institutions other than Boston College.

    Once a year, we will ask each research group to update their abstract and update, if necessary, the accounts for the group. New groups and new accounts may be created at any time.

    We also ask each research group to provide us:

    • A list of the publications in which the cluster supported their work.
    • A list of grants submitted in which the cluster was mentioned.
    • A list of funded grants in which the cluster was mentioned.
    • We need the duration of the grant, the amount of the grant, and the funding agency when we request information about grant activity that involves the cluster. Please send this information as it becomes available to researchservices@bc.edu.
       

    We expect all account holders to abide by the Cluster Policies: