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In conjunction with our partner, NCI, UOW is granted an annual allocation of compute time and storage on Gadi.

Allocations of compute time and storage are available to all UOW researchers (as per the allocation rules defined below).

The partner share scheme is managed and distributed by the UOW HPC Steering Committee, the Steering Committee chair and the Research Office.

In order to get started on Gadi, it is necessary to:

• Register for an NCI user account
• Propose a New Project or Connect to an Existing Project. 
  • Please see Project Roles for more information about the different project roles and their capabilities within a project on Gadi. 

For projects with HDR student members, we generally recommend that the HDR supervisor be nominated as project lead – this helps provide oversight and continuity to the project. It is possible to specify a delegate project lead should the supervisor not access the project/system on a regular basis.

NCI provides some useful documentation with regard to working in the Gadi environment – some links to note include:

• Job Submission (noting the queue limits)
• Software
• Storage and Data Management
• NCI Support (best option for Gadi-specific/compute jobs questions)
• User Training

UoW has access to 6826 KSU per quarter except for q1 which is 5526 KSU (applicable until 2024 q2).

Applications for HPC compute time from academic staff (for new and existing projects) are welcome and will initially be handled by RO + HPC Steering Committee chair. The full HPC Steering Committee at meeting (timing permitting) or via email will review the set of requests as to be filed with NCI at the beginning of each quarter, with interim applications and adjustments by RO + HPC Steering Committee chair.

Provided there are no technical reasons as to why the project is unsuited to the selected computer system, all reasonable requests will be considered.

Quarterly Allocations

The starting share for each project is the UoW share divided by the number of allocation requests in that quarter. If some projects need less than that amount, the remaining time is redistributed between projects that requested more than that amount.

Call-outs for applications for compute time on Gadi for the UOW/NCI Partner Share will be made before the beginning of each quarter. More information can be found at Requesting Compute Time and Storage on Gadi on the UOW/NCI Partner Share. 

All NCI users must ensure that they are on the NCI HPC Users mailing list. If you are an NCI user and are not on this mailing list, please sign up via the NCI HPC Users Mailing List sign-up page. 

Storage Requests

Accompanying storage requirements must be reasonable and proportionate, and we will also be expecting users to keep us up-to-date at least monthly if they won't be utilising all of the storage request. Here storage = disk space, and any time for storage jobs (copyq queue) would be expected to be included in the compute time request. Researchers should be familiar with the different filesystems available (massdata, /g/data, /scratch)and are expected to use them appropriately.

Note the /scratch data policy as of May 2022 which is found here https://nci.org.au/news-events/news/new-file-management-policy-ncis-scratch-file-system.

The HPC Steering Committee manages /g/data and /massdata requests through the quarterly survey along with compute requests. In the survey we ask you to specify a length of time after which the storage space will be freed up for other UOW users.

Please plan in advance how your storage will be managed and prepare to have the data moved to other UOW options such as StorageGRID at the end of your specified time frame.

Mid-Quarter Review: Compute Time Top-up/Under-utilisation

In the middle of each quarter, project leads will be asked to review their current projects and indicate if:

• additional compute time is required.

• the current allocation of compute time for the quarter is still required.

• any compute time should be re-allocated to other projects.

30% Utilisation

For projects with usage of ≤ 30% at the time of the mid quarter review, if we do not receive a survey response, we will re-allocate at least 50% of the remaining compute time of your project and if resources are tight, we may remove your allocation completely.

The remaining partner share buffer time, including any time available for re-allocation, will be allocated 1 week after the mid-quarter review (allocation calculations follow the initial quarterly allocation determination).

Requests

It is recommended to raise requests at the start of a quarter, because as we progress through initial and mid-quarter allocations, the available compute time remaining for allocation may be limited. 

More information about raising requests can be found at Requesting Compute Time and Storage on Gadi on the UOW/NCI Partner Share. 

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Note:

• Allocations are valid for a specific quarter
• Allocations must be used or re-allocated to another project within the quarter specified - there is no roll-over mechanism once an allocation has been made

Call-outs for compute time every quarter will be sent to the Lead CI’s of every project, to ensure that there is no ‘doubling up’ of compute time requests for each project. Each Lead CI will be emailed a survey link that is unique to their project.

All members of the nci_hpc_users@uow.edu.au mailing list will be notified via email when the Lead CI’s have received their Compute Time Request email. If your Lead CI has not received has not received an allocation survey link at this time you should contact hpc_admin@uow.edu.au.

More information about this can be found at System to request compute time and storage on Gadi on the UOW/NCI Partner Share. 

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Note: GPU Compute Charges

• NCI does not charge service units (SUs) for GPUs; however jobs are charged for the associated CPU usage
• Further details are available on the NCI documentation page.

It is a condition of use that the use of the UOW/NCI Partner Share be cited in the acknowledgements section of publications.

An acceptable form of words is:

"This research/project was undertaken with the assistance of resources and services from the University of Wollongong (UOW) partner share of the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government."

On 20 September 2023, Haibo Yu, Chair of the HPC Steering Committee, presented on NCMAS for UOW staff and students. The recording is available here:

NCMAS 2024 Information Seminar

NOTE: please review the NCMAS guidelines appropriate for the year you are submitting.

For any questions relating to the NCI Partner Share or high performance computing at the University of Wollongong, please email hpc_admin@uow.edu.au.