Center for High Performance Computing

USU provides access to high performance computing resources through the University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC). The CHPC is located in Salt Lake City; a high bandwidth link between the Logan campus and the CHPC supports rapid data transfer.

USU faculty and students have the same access rights and privileges at the CHPC as do University of Utah faculty and students. Any USU faculty can get an account at the CHPC; students can get accounts that are linked to a faculty member’s account.

Create an Account

All USU students must apply for an account through a USU faculty member who has a CHPC account.

USU Faculty – Instructions for getting a CHPC account for yourself

  1. Send an email to issues@chpc.utah.edu with the following information:
    1. Name
    2. Birthday in mm/dd/yyyy format. This is required and will be your initial password
    3. Last 4 digits of SSN (NOT REQUIRED)
    4. Previous University of Utah ID# (if any)?
    5. Physical address
    6. Email address
    7. A brief description of your research.
  2. CHPC will request a University of Utah (uNID) for you and email you the uNID. You will need to set your secure password by logging into http://gate.acs.utah.edu.
  3. Once you are able to log on to CIS, please let the CHPC staff know and a CHPC account will be created for you.

USU Faculty – Instructions for getting a CHPC account for your student

  1. You must first have a CHPC account for yourself. See instructions above.
  2. Create a University of Utah uNID for your student by completing and submitting the affiliate form. Select “10017 Visiting Scholar” as the Affiliate Type. 00640 UIT CTR HIGH PERF COMPUTNG is the Authorizing Department. The Reason for Entry is “HPC support for Utah State University users”. Set the expiration date to 3 years in the future (maximum).
  3. Once you have received an email giving you the uNID, the student must set a secure password.
  4. Create the CHPC account. There are two ways to create the student’s account:
    1. You, as a CHPC PI, can fill out the PI Account Request form. The student will need to verify his/her email address, and the account is created.
    2. The student can fill out the Account Request form. This will generate an email for you to approve the account, as well as having the student verify his or her email.

Purchase Hardware

USU faculty can purchase hardware to be installed at the CHPC, taking advantage of the pricing that has been obtained from bids requested by the CHPC.

Storage: If you need to store large data sets at the CHPC you will likely want to purchase storage.

Cores: If you need to run lengthy jobs without interruption, you will likely want to purchase cores so that you have an allocation that will not be interrupted by other jobs.

Access Resources

The CHPC provides allocations to users on a quarterly basis. Those allocations, which are provided at no cost, make use of ‘free’ cycles (cycles on hardware purchased by the CHPC, or by users, that are not being used by whoever purchased the hardware). If you get an account during a quarter, you can still apply for a quick allocation during that quarter. Jobs that are running on free cycles may be interrupted if the person who purchased the hardware submits a job.

If you purchase hardware that is installed at the CHPC you will have primary access to cycles provided by that hardware, and your jobs will take precedence over other jobs that either currently running or waiting to run.