High Performance Computing

The University of Groningen provides solutions to perform large, complex calculations through a High Performance Computing cluster to a local cloud platform. 

High Performace Computing: Hábrók

Hábrók is the University of Groningen's flagship high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, delivered by Dell and designed to support a wide range of research workloads. It combines large-scale CPU resources with advanced GPU capabilities for AI, data analysis, and simulations. Hábrók provides access to many commonly used scientific programs and applications.

To get started, you first need to request an account. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced user, you can join the Hábrók training courses (beginner and advanced), which are offered multiple times per year. It is also possible to book a support appointment on request during the designated timeslots.

Key features

• Compute capacity: Over 140 compute nodes, each with up to 128 CPU cores and 512 GB memory.

• High-memory nodes: 4 nodes with up to 4 TB RAM for memory-intensive jobs.

• GPU power:

  • 6 GPU nodes with NVIDIA A100 accelerators.

  • 19 GPU nodes with NVIDIA V100 accelerators.

  • 1 dedicated education node with NVIDIA H100 accelerators.

  • Additional interactive GPU nodes for development and visualization.

• Fast interconnects: Selected nodes connected via 100 Gbps Omni-Path for multi-node and GPU workloads.

• Storage: Local SSD or NVMe storage on all nodes, supporting high I/O performance.

Cloud Computing: Merlin

Merlin is the university’s local cloud platform, developed by the CIT, designed to support both High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Throughput Computing (HTC) workloads.

Unlike Hábrók, which is optimized for large-scale simulations and tightly coupled jobs, Merlin offers an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment where researchers can request virtual machines and customize their computing environments. This makes Merlin especially useful for flexible, scalable workflows, data processing pipelines, and software environments that go beyond the traditional HPC model.