Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology
Overview
The Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST, pronounced "c-cast") develops, manages, brokers, and operates high-performance, cloud, and interactive computing resources, and educates researchers on proper and efficient use of the resources and on other topics of interest to the computational science and engineering community. CCAST continually works to enhance NDSU's capabilities and competitive edge in disciplines and research that rely on advanced computing.
We use UNIX/Linux primarily. The basic level of services is FREE of charge to all faculty, staff, and students at NDSU, the tribal colleges and universities in the state of North Dakota, and the primarily undergraduate institutions and Masters colleges/universities within the North Dakota University System (NDUS). Additional services (for example, dedicated hardware) are available at cost.
Acknowledging CCAST: You are required to include the following statement (or a close variant) in all research outputs (papers, presentations, theses, etc.) that have used CCAST resources: "This work used resources of the Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST) at North Dakota State University, which were made possible in part by National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Award No. 2019077."
Personnel
- Executive Director: Khang Hoang
- Assistant Director & Research Facilitator: Nick Dusek
- Scientific Software Specialist: Stephen Szwiec
- Research Facilitator: Sara Tolba Selim
- HPC Systems Manager: Samuel Saula
- HPC Systems Administrator: Ryan Anderson
- HPC Systems Administrator: Aaron Janssen
Resources
- Linux-based, high-performance computing (HPC) clusters
- Researcher-owned compute and storage ("condo") units
- Permanent and scratch data storage
- Fast data transfer via Globus and ScienceDMZ
- Training in advanced research computing and related topics
- Consulting on computational approaches, methods, and tools
- Assistance with computational workflow development
- Proposal writing assistance and research collaboration
HPC systems
- Compute clusters: The Thunder Prime cluster (AMD CPUs) and the Thunder cluster (Intel CPUs; in attrition mode) currently have a combination of >12,000 CPU cores and dozen of GPUs.
- Parallel filesystems with over 2PB of combined data storage capacity; research data archive (of 1.6PB) and IBM tape archival system of over 6PB capacity.
External resources
- National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR Pilot; (no cost)
- Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS; no cost)
- Open Science Grid (OSG; no cost)
- Other national resources (no cost, usually with certain conditions)
- Commercial cloud services (contact CCAST for advice)