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University of Wisconsin–Madison

Processing

Batch computing:

  • These resources are appropriate for researchers that need to process significant amounts of data or perform large numbers of numerical simulations.
  • The Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) manages a large-scale High-Throughput Computing system of 20,000 cores and hundreds of GPUs available to all researchers at the UW-Madison campus and also provides access to HTC capacity beyond the campus.
  • The Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC) manages a 5,000 core Slurm cluster, including four GPUs. The Slurm cluster is tightly integrated with the SSCC’s interactive Linux cluster (Linstat), so jobs can be easily developed and then scaled up.


High-performance computing:

  • High-performance computing (HPC) provides researchers with the computing resources needed to tackle challenging numerical simulations that may require large amounts of memory or that are bottlenecked by processing speed. This involves configuring computing clusters to create supercomputers that run applications that use specialized software (i.e. MPI) to achieve internal parallelization of work across multiple servers of dozens to hundreds of cores. The Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) manages a 5,000 core High-Performance Computing cluster.
  • The Social Science Computing Cooperative’s Slurm cluster of 5,000 cores is also capable of high-performance computing.


Cloud computing:

  • Cloud computing is a model that provides on-demand access to computing resources, such as storage and processing power, over the internet. The university supports multiple cloud computing platforms and services including: AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP (Google Cloud Platform), and Microsoft Azure. The university provides reduced facilities and overhead charges, discounts for NIH-funded research, consulting, and security protections.


GPU resources for AI, machine learning, and scientific computing research:

  • The primary resource for GPUs on campus is provided through the CHTC. CHTC provides access to hundreds of GPUs through a general-use pool in the GPU Lab and through prioritized resources for individual research groups.
  • The Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC) has a small number of GPUs available in its Slurm cluster, and two in its Silo environment for working with sensitive or restricted data.


Working with HIPAA and other sensitive data:

Some research involves sensitive or protected data. In particular, the HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes national standards to protect individuals’ medical records and other individually identifiable health information. UW–Madison has multiple computing platforms that are designed for working with these kinds of data. The primary resources include:

  • Platform X is a managed Azure platform with enhanced HIPAA security and privacy protections for working with protected health information. Provides cloud-based virtual workstations with standard and project-specific software for data analysis by research teams. (Resource provided by the School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) Informatics and IT).
  • Platform R is an on-premise High-Performance Computing cluster provided by SMPH designed to specifically support Genomics and Imaging researchers.
  • Silo: The Social Science Computing Cooperative provides a remotely accessible high-security computing environment for working with HIPAA and other sensitive or restricted data. It contains Windows servers, interactive Linux servers, and a small Slurm cluster for High Throughput Computing with one GPU server (two GPUs).