The condo plan gives participants access to additional cycles through the pooling of computing resources, giving participants significantly greater computational power and higher core counts than if limited to their own hardware. Researchers who contribute to the TSCC cluster have priority access to the nodes that they contribute (via the home queue). In addition, they can run jobs on any available nodes, including hotel and other condo nodes (via the condo queue). This effectively increases their computing capability and flexibility, which can be extremely valuable during times of peak demand.
Condo participants may purchase general computing nodes, GPU nodes, or both. See the current price structure in the TSCC Node Expense Table (costs and configurations are subject to change annually). The operations fee is supplemented for UCSD participants by the RCI program, and pays for labor, software licensing, administration hardware, and colocation fees.
Condo participants may take possession of their nodes at any time; however, once equipment is removed it cannot be reinstalled in the TSCC.
Condo nodes come with a three‐year warranty. After expiration, participants may continue to run their operational nodes in the TSCC for an additional year. At the end of four years, participants must take possession of or surplus their equipment.
Charges for computing time are calculated on a Service Unit (SU) basis. One SU = 1 core–hour of computing time on all queues for which charges are calculated. The cost in SUs is the same regardless of which actual nodes a job runs on.
| Organization / Node Type | Hotel & PDAF | Condo |
|---|---|---|
| UCSD Users | $0.025/SU | $0.015/SU |
| Other UC Campuses | $0.03/SU | Please inquire* |
| Public | $0.09/SU | Please inquire* |
Each year, condo cluster participants will receive an allocation of cluster computing time proportional to the capabilities of their purchased nodes. For example, a participant that purchases eight general computing nodes will receive just under 1.1 million SUs. This amount is based on 24x365 usage of 8 x 16 = 128 cores, allowing for 3% maintenance downtime. These core–hours can be used any time during the year on any of the computing nodes. Unused core–hours by condo participants expire at the end of each year.
Condo jobs that require a number of cores less than or equal to their purchased nodes are guaranteed to start within eight hours of submission and can run for an unlimited amount of time. Jobs that utilize the hotel nodes have a 168–hour time limit, while jobs that extend to other participants’ condo nodes have an eight–hour time limit. See the Jobs section for submission details and examples.
Condo participants may submit gleaning jobs (via the glean queue) to run on idle computing nodes. These jobs are not charged against the submitter's SU balance, but they may be terminated at any time by the scheduler if the nodes where they are running are needed to run higher–priority jobs.
Because the capabilities and purpose of the GPU nodes differ significantly from the general computing nodes, SUs received for contributed GPU nodes and general computing nodes cannot be interchanged.
Read the Memorandum of Understanding that describes the condo agreement in full detail. All condo participants will sign a similar document as part of their formal entry into TSCC.
Pay–as–you–go (hotel) users’ jobs can only run on the hotel nodes. Initially there will be 40 general computing nodes (640 cores); additional nodes may be added based on demand. Hotel nodes are configured with 64 GB of memory and an IB interface. The general computing nodes will be allocated per-core, allowing up to 16 jobs to run on each node simultaneously. Hotel jobs can also run on the large–memory PDAF nodes; these nodes will be allocated on a per-core basis like compute nodes, but they allow access to 16GB of memory per allocated processor rather than the 4GB of the general compute nodes.
Download the Acceptable Use Policy. When using the Triton Shared Computing Cluster and associated resources, you agree to comply with these conditions.
The TSCC condo cost structure is based on condo participants purchasing their nodes, paying a one–time fee for their pro rata share of the common networking and storage infrastructure, and a modest annual operating expense that is supplemented by the campus RCI program.
Pay-as-you-go hotel users purchase cycles that reflect the total cost-of-ownership, albeit leveraging the economies of scale afforded by TSCC. For UCSD affiliates, the cost for the general computing hotel nodes is $0.025 per SU. The cost for the PDAF high-memory nodes is the same, and supports the higher memory allowance per core. The minimum hotel purchase is $250.
For condo participants, the primary cost is purchasing the computing nodes, plus a one-time fee of $939 per node to cover the costs of shared infrastructure such as interconnects, home file systems and the parallel file system. In addition, there is a modest IDC-bearing operations fee of $495/node/year, which will allow for ongoing operations, user services support, and expansion of the cluster.
The TSCC is available to researchers from other UC campuses, other educational institutions and industry. Costs are competitive but higher than those cited above for UCSD researchers because the UCSD RCI program is supplementing the program. Please get in touch with the Participant Contact for information on the rate structure for your organization.
Most of the system administration, user support, software licensing, and other operating costs are supplemented by the RCI program. The system is housed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the UCSD campus.
*Ask the Participation Contact about pricing for non-UCSD organizations.