More data, more computing resources, more results聽
We offer core services to all users for data storage and for accessing distributed computing resources.
Our users are allocated a system account (currently about 350 active聽accounts) to access data storage space and distributed computing resources.
Our IT management team supports over 140 individual computers (workstations and聽rack-mounted servers) on our local network.
We provide a grid-computing cluster, composed of more than 550 CPU cores in聽varying memory configurations (from 48 up to 512 GB of memory per server)聽yielding more than 1,100 virtual cores (logical processors). In terms of GPU聽computing, we currently provide a dual-GPU adapter with 24 GB of memory聽yielding 4,992 NVIDIA CUDA cores, 3 Tesla C2070 adapters with 6 GB of memory聽each yielding 1,344 NVIDIA CUDA cores. Adding to that, the GPU computing聽ability of individual workstations provides more than 20,000 CUDA cores.
Overall, around 1 million computing hours are scheduled per year on average on聽the different grid compute queues amongst the different BIC labs.
We have also greatly upgraded and expanded our storage capacity, now exceeding聽750 TB and building up to 1.5 PB of networked space (in situ and in the cloud).
A new local storage space warehouse is hosted in the BIC server room. It聽consists in a Dell/EMC/Isilon cluster composed at the moment of 5 Isilon聽storage nodes for a effective usable capacity of 500TB. It can be seamlessly聽scaled up in size and performance by simply adding more storage nodes up to聽15PB in storage capacity.
Access to the BIC Isilon Cluster storage space by the compute cluster聽nodes is through a dedicated 10Gigabit/s Fibre optic network. As for the聽workstations spread over all the different BIC labs, access to the聽cluster storage space is achieved through a 1Gigabit network provided by聽McGill IT services (100Mb to the workstation). McGill IT service now聽offers 1GbE to the desktop if so desired.聽
A new 40-core聽server for Virtual Machines provisioning is also now available, in聽order to provide researchers with compute and analytic tools for specific tasks聽and workflows that cannot be easily met with the existing core infrastructure.
In addition, we configure and support high-end BIC Neuroimaging workstations聽for everyone. Service includes expert consulting for workstation or data server聽specification, purchase,聽installation and maintenance (Linux). All workstation聽installations comprise a series of specialized software applications for聽neuroimaging research (MINC, SPM, FSL, AFNI, , etc.). Installation of聽additional software packages can be accommodated upon request.
FAQ, troubleshooting and helpful information can be found
