About the CISM¶

The CISM is the UCLouvain technological platform for supercomputing. The initials “CISM” stand for “Calcul Intensif et Stockage de Masse”, or high-performance computing and mass storage. It was created in 2004 at UCLouvain by the users of the HPC facilities coming from different Departments in the University. The CISM operates the scientific computing clusters and the scientific data storage systems installed at UCLouvain, organizes and delivers training sessions about HPC targeted at researchers and offers consultancy and expertise in code porting, optimization, compilation, etc. It is governed by user representatives and is part of the CÉCI consortium.

The CISM is a team of 6 people all specialized in high-peformance computing and/or mass storage. See the list here.

Users can get involved by representing their colleagues at the Board, or Comité des Utilisateurs (CUCISM) in French. The CUCISM gathers approximately 5 times a year to make decisions about daily management of the clusters as well as long-term infrastructure planning. Middle and long term strategic decisions are made inside a management comity, or “Comité de Gestion” (CGCISM), where each involved institute is represented. CGCISM gathers approximately 2 times a year.

The CISM is part of a consortium gathering the other French-speaking universities, the CÉCI.

The name “CÉCI” is an acronym for “Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif”, which can be translated as “Consortium of Supercomputing Facilities”. It was created on Nov. 9th 2010, when the Rectors of the five French-speaking unversities in Belgium signed the Agreement, as a means to share HPC facilities and resources, and mutualize HPC kow-how and expertise among the universities.

Current partners include Université catholique de Louvain / CISM, Université Libre de Bruxelles / Hydra, Université de Namur / PTCI, Université de Mons / LPSI , CMN and INFO, and Université de Liège / SEGI. See the CÉCI website at www.ceci-hpc.be.

The services¶

The CISM offers multiple services related to high-performance computing.

• Cluster computing: working on clusters of several dozens computers in batch jobs
• Interactive computing : working on large computers through an SSH or a web connection
• Mass storage : storing terabytes of data reliably
• Data sharing : sharing data with colleagues in a controlled way
• Support : getting help when needed

Access & conditions¶

Depending on the resources you want to access, you will need various accounts. The CISM manages account creation for two types of accounts: CISM accounts, mainly used for mass storage and interactive computing , and CÉCI account, mainly used for cluster computing. Some other resources may require other accounts such as your UCLouvain portal account, or a cluster-specific account.

• Request a CISM account.
• Request a CÉCI account.

The basic rule for obtaining an account is to be holder of a @uclouvain email address. Besides that, access is granted once the account is created, provided the user agrees to the following rules:

• you will not share access credentials with ANYONE ;
• you take responsibility for backups of your files ;
• you agree to be registered to mailing lists for announcements related to the infrastructure or events we organise ;
• you acknowledge the CISM and other providers in your publications that use their infrastructure (see below).

• and you follow the rules

  • of the CISM, related to the type of equipement you are using (see the various sections of this documentation) ;
  • of this University (see this document) ;
  • of the entity hosting the equipment you get access to thanks to your CÉCI account.

Among the rules common to many institutions hosting HPC equipment, the one related to proper acknowledgement of the use of the resources in the publications is important.

Depending on the type of service, access will often be either SSH or Web, or a specific client.

Acknowledgements¶

Public funding authorities measure the success of a scientific infrastructure by the number of publications that are produced thanks to that infrastructure. It is therefore extremely important to make sure your publications can be related to the clusters or services that you used.

You are therefore requested to do two things:

1. Add a pre-defined sentence in the Acknowledgments section of any paper you are a (co-)author of.
2. Encode specific tags in Dial.pr for your publications.

Tags¶

Besides adding the acknowledgement in your publications, you can help us tremendously when we write our annual report if you tag your publication in Dial with Internal keywords (ID Interne institut/pôle in French) CISM and CECI as depicted in the screenshots below.

In English:

In French:

If you used Lucia, please also add “Internal keywords” cenaero and lucia.

In English:

In French: