Research Computing

Powering innovative research and pedagogy by offering cutting edge computing capabilities to the SEAS community.

SEAS has a centrally managed partition on Harvard’s Cannon supercomputer, which is available to SEAS researchers. As of Spring 2023, the partition has 110+ compute nodes with 5,500+ compute cores, 220+ GPUs, and 30+TB of memory. Overflow capacity is provided by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing (FASRC) group.

Get Started

• New Users: A short video from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab provides an overview of a supercomputer. FASRC also has an Introduction to the FASRC Cluster.
• Experienced users: The FASRC User Quickstart Guide should be useful for getting started.
• A Slack group, SEAS-ResCompData, has been created for researchers and staff who use supercomputers at SEAS to connect with each other and share information. It’s available on the Harvard Slack Grid.

Documentation & Resources

Specific information is available on running jobs on the SEAS partitions. A few SEAS-maintained resources are also available:

• Tips for Cannon will help most researchers learn about Slurm clusters like Cannon.
• Scientific Software for SEAS affiliates covers software packages such as ABAQUS, Comsol, Matlab, Lumerical, and OpenFoam.
• The list Supercomputers Available to All Researchers details supercomputers any US-based researcher can use at no cost. Interested SEAS researchers should contact SEAS’ CyberInfrastructure Campus Champion, Jason Wells.

Data and Data Security

• Four data tiers, and costs, are explained on FASRC’s Storage Center.
• All data at Harvard is subject to the Harvard Research Data Security Policy and Harvard Data Security Levels.
• Cannon is only available for data that falls into Harvard level 1 and 2 data.
• If you have level 3 data, the FASSE cluster will be of interest.
• Pedagogical/course computing needs can leverage the Academic Cluster, which is provided jointly by University Research Computing and the FAS Academic Technology Group.
• Options may be available for Level 4 and 5 data projects.

All Level 3, 4, and 5 data projects should be discussed with the SEAS Security Officer, Judit Flo Gaya.

Contact

Help for using Cannon and the FASSE cluster is extensively documented on FASRC's own documentation pages. Office Hours are available every Wednesday from 12:00PM to 2:45PM EST at the FASRC Office Hours. Additionally, please feel free to reach out to Jason Wells for SEAS-related research computing questions. Joining the SEAS-ResCompData Slack group above is also a great way to connect with others knowledgeable people.