Research Computing

Overview	IS&T’s Scientific Computing and Visualization (SCV) group provides specialized supercomputing and communication resources (Scientific Computing Facilities, or SCF) in support of computational science and engineering, scientific visualization, computer graphics, and other disciplines that require high-performance computing or complex visualization. SCV manages these resources in close collaboration with the University’s Center for Computational Science.
Available To	Students, Faculty, Researchers, External Research Collaborators, Industrial Partners
Benefits	The use of high-performance computing systems can dramatically reduce the time to obtain solutions for computationally intensive problems. Our supercomputing and visualization facilities are available to the entire Boston University research community with no direct cost for the acquisition, maintenance, or use of the resource.
Key Features	Access to the Scientific Computing Facilities (SCF), including: Massively parallel computing systems (e.g., a 1024-node IBM Blue Gene/L) Large shared memory systems (e.g. IBM pSeries p655) Linux clusters Broad set of open source and commercial scientific, mathematical, plotting, and other software packages Large, high-performance storage system (e.g., GPFS, a parallel file system) shared across all the platforms Access to visualization facilities including the Computer Graphics Lab and the Deep Vision Display Wall Consulting and programming assistance from our system administrators and scientific and visualization programming and consulting staff Training materials for getting started as well as becoming more proficient with the facilities
Requirements	People using the Scientific Computing Facilities (SCF) must be a member of an SCF research project. BU faculty and full-time research staff may create SCF research projects and serve as Principal Investigators. Principal Investigators may add their collaborators (students, researchers outside of BU, etc.) to their SCF research project. Undergraduate and graduate students interested in using the facilities, but not yet associated with an SCF project, may contact help@scv.bu.edu to inquire about start-up accounts with very small CPU allocations and limited time durations.
Cost	Services are offered at no charge to the BU community. There is a charge to industrial partners.
Getting Started	Computation Visualization Getting an account: BU faculty and full-time research staff Students and others