Bridging the Digital Divide in Research: Introducing Chicago Computes
We are pleased to announce the launch of Chicago Computes, part of the Forward Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), a comprehensive effort to provide faculty and researchers with fully subsidized access to an initial base of research computing, visualization and/or data storage resources.
In recognizing the need to provide researchers with advanced computing resources and support, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Innovation worked collaboratively to develop the Chicago Computes, a transformative approach to advancing research, fostering access equity, and driving innovation.
What is the Chicago Computes Program? Heading link
Through this program, eligible UIC faculty and their lab members will be granted fully-subsidized access to advanced computing, visualization, and data resources, along with broad access to research computing facilitators and data scientists, to help them accomplish their research and scholarship goals.
Who is eligible to participate in the program? Heading link
The Chicago Computes program is open to all UIC faculty (including assistant, associate, adjunct, clinical, and full professors), who can then share their allocation allowance with their postdocs, grad students, staff researchers, and other campus research affiliates.
What resources are available? Heading link
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Computational Resources
Up to 5000 core-hours or 50 GPU hours on our state-of-the-art Lakeshore cluster. These resources are valid for one year from the date of activation and can be renewed upon request.
The computational resources available to the program consist of 20 dual-socket nodes, each configured with 2 AMD EPYC 7763 (“Milan”) processors with 64-cores/socket (128-cores/node) at 2.45 GHz and 256 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM. The Chicago Computes resources also contain 2 GPU nodes, each configured with 4 NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 80 GB RAM/GPU, 1 single-socket AMD EPYC 7763 processor with 64-cores at 2.45GHz, and 512GB of DDR4-3200 RAM. Storage for the system is provided by a 3 PB state-of-the-art GPFS fileserver.
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Research Data Storage
2 TB of storage on Research Data Lake. The term limit for this storage system is 5 years.
500 GB on Research Data Glacier for meeting the data sharing requirements of NIH or other federally-funded research grants. Term limit is 7 years.
1 TB of high-performance storage on Research Data Rapids for HPC users. Term limit is 1 year (renewable).
Unlimited access to Globus – a Research Data Management tool.
Once the storage terms limits have been reached, researchers have to option to purchase storage on these systems. Please visit the respective systems webpages purchasing details.
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Consultation Services
Computational and data scientists
Bioinformatics
AI programmers & engineers
Cloud Architects
Systems & Data Engineers
How do I request access? Heading link
For more information about the program or to request access, please submit a request.