To access our HPC facilities you must be a member of an HPC Project. Read on to understand what an HPC Project is, and who is eligible to apply.
An HPC project is a record of your request, a grouping of users who you want to access resources on the HPC, as well as a place to view the reports, utilisation data and analysis of historic jobs. We also use your HPC project on the portal in a public directory of users of our facilities. The description of the tools and software used in your project, as well as the type of computation and workflow will be used to inform others about the impact of the HPC facilities on Newcastle University research output.
A HPC project should be for a single, well-defined project or activity. The creation of generic 'lab' or 'group' projects is not permitted, as per our Access, Accounts & Projects policies.
HPC Accounts
All user accounts must be a member of at least one HPC project.
To apply for a new HPC project account, you must have an existing Newcastle University IT account - this implies that you must either be a member of staff, or a student enrolled on one or more academic modules or programmes.
For more details about restrictions on accounts, please view our Access, Accounts & Policies page.
Use of the HPC facilities for asynchronous teaching, i.e. self-study, project work and non-timetabled activity is generally considered to be within the scope of normal HPC projects and will be processed as per a normal request.
If you have a need to use the HPC facilities for synchronous practical sessions, on a regular, timetabled basis, or for substantial numbers of taught students, please contact the RSE team before making your request, as this may need special consideration by our academic leadership team.
Requests for new accounts or projects on the legacy Rocket HPC service are continuing to be handled using the existing self-service process on the NUIT ITService website. Until the point at which Rocket is decommissioned, this will be the process that we will continue to follow for further Rocket project requests.
The details for requesting Rocket access are linked below:
Whilst the Comet HPC facility is not yet live, all requests for new HPC projects and accounts will be handled through this website. Once live, you will be able to register new HPC projects using the My HPC Projects link, accessed from the menu under the 'My Account' button from the top of any page.
The new request workflow for Comet HPC projects is handled entirely within this website - you do not need to raise an ITService ticket with NUIT.
Note: All HPC project members on Comet must pass the HPC Driving Test before being able to request a new project, or log in to the facility.