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Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology

CCAST provides advanced cyberinfrastructure for computational research and education at NDSU and beyond

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 NDSUthe tribal colleges and universities in the state of North Dakota, and the primarily undergraduate institutions and Master’s colleges/universities within the North Dakota University System (NDUS). Additional services (for example, dedicated hardware) are available at cost.

Acknowledging CCASTYou 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 NSF MRI Award No. 2019077."

Personnel

Resources

  • Linux-based, high-performance computing (HPC) clusters
  • Compute and storage condo (i.e., researcher-owned) units
  • Permanent and scratch data storage
  • Fast data transfer via Globus and ScienceDMZ
  • Training in advanced research computing and related topics 
  • Consulting and computational workflow development
  • Proposal writing assistance and research collaboration

HPC systems

  • Compute clusters: The Thunder Cluster (Intel CPUs) and Thunder Prime Cluster (AMD CPUs) currently have a combination of over 12,000 CPU cores and 70 GPUs in total. 
  • 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

  • Commercial cloud services (contact CCAST for advice)
  • Open Science Grid (OSG; no cost)
  • Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS; no cost)
  • Other national resources (no cost, usually with certain conditions)

Intended Audience

  • Faculty
  • Staff
  • Students

Using This Service

Availability

24/7/365 [*Standard outages]

Support Contact

ndsu.ccast.support@ndsu.edu

Cost

University funded: no charge.