High Performance Computing Center

Scuola Normale Superiore
About

Creation

The HPC Center of Scuola Normale Superiore (Centro HPC or CHPC hereafter) was created on December 4, 2019 (D.D. n.643, 644)

Purpose

technical support for SNS researchers requiring:

  • scientific calculation on high performance architectures
  • webservices, databases and web pages.
    The CHPC offers technical support to the Docstar Laboratory of the Scuola Normale Superiore with regard to project implementation, web hosting, web development, backups and database project and administration (see Docstar website for more detailed information - site is in Italian)

Main activities

  • 24/7 management of the computational clusters hosted in the server room of the San Silvestro complex
  • design and installation of new computing infrastructures
  • coordination of hosting, installation and maintenance of equipment
  • installation and maintenance of the workload and storage quota management system
  • scientific software installation
  • virtual infrastructure management for the management of virtual machines or containers
  • infrastructure management for websites provisioning for research

Governance

The policies of the CHPC and its development plan are set up by the CHPC Committee, installed on April 7 2020. The Committee is formed by three SNS faculty members and two SNS technical staff members. The Committee takes decisions by consensus, or by majority when consensus is not reached. At present its members are Andrea Ferrara, Julien Bloino, Andrei Mesinger and Federico Calzolari.