Resource Pricing
The Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research provides access to high performance computing (HPC), data analytics environments, as well as secure cyberinfrastructures for analysis of sensitive data. ACER works with top-tier vendors to deliver an expandable computing environment to the University of Illinois at Chicago community. This infrastructure includes core hardware, software, administrative, technical, and user support that can be used by researchers to convert funding into research computing resources in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner.
HPC Partnership (a.k.a. Condo) Model Heading link
Investors (researcher, department or college) who seek to secure dedicated computing capacity for their groups should invest through our partnership model.
The prices shown below are based upon the latest quotes obtained from our vendors and are subject to change. Please complete the form below to request one or more nodes. The deadline for node purchases in Summer 2023 is Friday, August 18. Requests received after this date will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis depending upon the availability of additional nodes. The next call for node purchases is expected at the beginning of the Fall semester.
Compute Nodes
64-core Standard Memory (256 GB) Node:
2 x Intel 8358 Platinum Processors @ 2.6Ghz, 32 cores/CPU, 256 GB memory and 5-year warranty
Cost of the node: $9,600.00
Infrastructure cost per node: $950.00
Total cost per node: $ 10,550.00
64-core Mid-Memory (1 TB) Node:
2 x Intel 8358 Platinum Processors @ 2.6Ghz, 32 cores/CPU, 1 TB memory and 5-year warranty
Cost of the node: $14,700.00
Infrastructure cost per node: $950.00
Total cost per node: $15,650.00
64-core High-Memory (4 TB) Node:
2 x Intel 8358 Platinum Processors @ 2.6Ghz, 32 cores/CPU, 4 TB memory and 5-year warranty
Cost of the node: $48,500.00
Infrastructure cost per node: $1900.00
Total cost per node: $50,400.00
GPU Nodes
NVidia L40 GPU Node:
4 x NVidia L40 GPUs, 48 GB of high-bandwidth memory per GPU
2 x Intel Xeon Gold 5318S CPUs @ 2.1Ghz, 24 cores/CPU, 256 GB memory
5-year warranty
Cost of the node: $33,250.00
Infrastructure cost per node: $1,900.00
Total cost per node: $35,150.00
NVidia A100 GPU Node:
4 x NVidia A100 GPUs, 80 GB of high-bandwidth memory per GPU
2 x AMD EPYC 7763 CPUs @ 2.45Ghz, 64 cores/CPU, 256 GB memory
5-year warranty
Cost of the node: $63,000.00
Infrastructure cost per node: $1,900.00
Total cost per node: $64,900.00
HPC RCaaS: Research Computing as a Service Heading link
The RCaaS (a.k.a Fee-for-Service model) allows the purchase of compute resources on demand and are billed by the 28th of the following month to the University of Illinois CFOP# you provided when you requested access to the RCaaS program.
Important: The cluster hosting the RCaaS service, SABER, will be decommissioned in August 2024. Researchers looking for a similar access model are invited to use our AWS HPC in the Cloud resource.
Compute and Storage
The rate for RCaaS is $0.0224 per core-hour, which works out to $16.34 per core-month.
Project Storage for RCaaS:
Each new group will receive 25 GB of shared group storage and each user will receive 10 GB of home directory space at no charge. Additional High-Performance Parallel Storage can be purchased in increments of one TB for $19.00 per month. Parallel storage can facilitate faster data writes by using two redundant data caching servers connected to computation nodes over 56 Gbps Infiniband network. Bulk storage for a period of 5-year can be purchased at $780.00 per TB.
Billing Rules
- Investors will be charged the same rate no matter which nodes execute your jobs, and will only be charged for actual time used (rounded up to the next minute). Minimum job runtime is one hour.
- Jobs are scheduled such that only one job will run on one node at a time. Jobs will be charged for all cores on the node, regardless of whether or not they are used. Hence, it is optimal to use all 24 cores on each node when possible.
- ACER holds no liability for jobs lost due to user error and no refunds will be made in those cases. However, should a job fail due to reasons outside of the control of the user (e.g. operator error, environmental failures), a refund for time lost can be made.
- Order forms should be filled out for each research group to create a new group account. To request access to an existing group account, group staff (or lab members) should fill in the “Request Access” form on the right to seek the Principal Investigator or its designate approval.
Secure Computing Environment Heading link
The Secure Computing Environment (SCE) at ACER eases the burden on the researcher of having to configure and assure that their computational work environment has been configured with the appropriate security controls and to minimize the risk of exposing high risk data. The SCE makes it easier for researchers to implement necessary safeguards for research that is subject to regulatory or compliance requirements, including but not limited to, HIPAA, FISMA, Personal Information Protection Act of Illinois and other grant specific regulations.
Compute and Storage
| Level | CPU and Memory | Monthly Cost |
| 1 | 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM | $41.00 |
| 2 | 1 CPU, 4 GB RAM | $44.00 |
| 3 | 2 CPUs, 8 GB RAM | $61.00 |
| 4 | 4 CPUs, 16 GB RAM | $93.00 |
| 5 | 4 CPUs, 24 GB RAM | $109.00 |
| 6 | 4 CPUs, 32 GB RAM | $124.00 |
| 7 | 6 CPUs, 48 GB RAM | $172.00 |
| 8 | 6 CPUs, 64 GB RAM | $204.00 |
Additional Pricing
– All prices include 40 GB disk space. Additional storage is available for $0.10 per gigabyte per month.
Help and Support Heading link
Please contact us at acer@uic.edu for additional pricing details.