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Frequently Asked Questions

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  • Audience: Affiliate, Researcher, Staff, Student
  • Service Category: Research Services
  • Owner Team: ITS FAC Level3 Support
  • Service:
    Facility for Advanced Computing (FAC)

Q. What is the FAC technical architecture? 

Here’s a visual diagram of the FAC’s architecture, highlighting components and workflows in computing operations. 

FAC - FAQ Technical Diagram

 

Q. What is High-Performance Scratch Storage?

HPC environments can help you meet the growing demands of AI driven research. By investing in state-of-the-art hardware, HPC enables you to leverage high-performance computing and tackle your computationally intensive workloads. Coming Soon

High-Performance Scratch Storage: (used with HPC; purchased separately) provides immediate access to data with low latency, making it ideal for your high-performance workloads and real-time applications.

Scale up computing

  • Dozens to hundreds of compute nodes 
  • Low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect to allow work to span nodes (InfiniBand) 
  • Low-latency shared storage 
  • Combine to allow jobs to span 100-1000s of CPU/GPU cores and TBs of memory

Batch oriented

  • Scheduled jobs running over long periods 
  • Equitable allocation of resources 
  • Non-transactional, interactive but only through scheduling 

Consulting
Consulting services are available to build environments and support researchers in adapting and optimizing research problems to make use of HPC resources at a rate of $140 an hour.

 

How does Core HPC and FAC work together?

FAC - House FAC Core HPC

 


Core HPC Technical Diagram

FAC - HPC Technical Diagram

 

Q. What is Archive Storage?

Archive Storage, through Microsoft Azure, provides secure, scalable, and cost-effective cold storage for long-term retention. It integrates seamlessly with institutional workflows, supporting policy-based tiering for efficient data management while ensuring compliance and security for academic research.Archive Storage will offer seamless, high-speed data transfer with FAC Capacity Storage. Available Summer 2025 
 

 

 

Interested in FAC solutions?

Schedule a call with the FAC

Current customer in need of assistance?

Open a support ticket

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