Citation/Acknowledgment of Using Lighthouse for Research
Researchers are urged to acknowledge ARC in any publication, presentation, report, or proposal on research that involved ARC hardware (Lighthouse or other resources) and/or staff expertise.
“This research was supported in part through computational resources and services provided by Advanced Research Computing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.”
Researchers are asked to annually submit, by October 1, a list of materials that reference ARC, and inform its staff whenever any such research receives professional or press exposure ([email protected]). This information is extremely important in enabling ARC to continue supporting U-M researchers and obtain funding for future system and service upgrades.
Grant Submission Language
The language below can be used in grant submissions to government agencies or other funding entities.
Lighthouse Description
Computing
Lighthouse is an HPC Linux-based cluster intended to support parallel and other applications that are not suitable for departmental or individual computers. Each Lighthouse compute node comprises multiple CPU cores with at least 4 GB of RAM per core; The specifics of the node configurations align with researcher-defined needs. All compute nodes are interconnected with InfiniBand networking.
Computing jobs on Lighthouse are managed through the SLURM Scheduler.
Storage
The high-speed scratch file system provides 2 petabytes of storage at approximately 20 GB/s performance .
Intra-networking
All Lighthouse nodes are interconnected with InfiniBand EDR (100 Gb/s) or NDR200 networking capable of 200 Gb/s throughput. In addition to the InfiniBand networking, there is 25 Gb/s ethernet for the login and transfer nodes and a gigabit Ethernet network that connects the remaining nodes. This is used for node management and NFS file system access.
Inter-networking
Lighthouse is connected to the University of Michigan’s campus backbone to provide access to student and researcher desktops as well as other campus computing and storage systems. The campus backbone provides 100 Gbps connectivity to the commodity Internet and the research networks Internet2 and MiLR.
Software
The Lighthouse cluster includes a comprehensive software suite of commercial and open source research software, including major software compilers, and many of the common research-specific applications such as Mathematica, Matlab, R and Stata.
Data Center Facilities
Lighthouse is housed in the Modular Data Center (MDC).
Hardware Grants
Advanced Research Computing (ARC) allows researchers to work with ARC to purchase research hardware to be integrated into our high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. For more information, visit the ARC Research Purchased page.
Support
Lighthouse computing services are provided through a collaboration of University of Michigan units: Advanced Research Computing (in the Office of the VP of Research and the Provost’s Office), and computing groups in schools and colleges at the university.
Grant Proposal Steps
The Following Steps Will Help You Include Lighthouse in a Grant Proposal
- Determine the suitability of Lighthouse for your research by considering whether a large computing resource is required. It is important that the proposed funds will provide computing cycles in a way that allows the team of researchers to allocate them as needed.Lighthouse is an condo-style service and will be billed monthly. This billing structure is flexible to meet researcher needs and make the best possible use of the awarded funds. Hardware previously purchased / not purchased via ARC cannot be accepted into Lighthouse.
- Determine if the constraints on access to Lighthouse are suitable for your project. Access to Lighthouse and the software library will be granted to all University of Michigan faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students who have been granted access by the owners of the hardware. Contractors and collaborators from other institutions may not use Lighthouse because of licensing limitations with third party commercial software.
- Determine an appropriate budget to include in the proposal; the cost per month is an approved rate and may be charged as a direct cost to federal grants. The rates for budgeting are available on the Rates page. For questions or more information about estimating usage, contact [email protected].
- Use the appropriate parts of the Lighthouse Description above in your proposal. In NSF proposals use the category “computer service” and the phrase “cluster compute allocation” with quantities expressed as core-months or core-years to describe Lighthouse time.
- Plan for the end of the award period or the exhaustion of the funds. At that time, no more jobs associated with that Lighthouse project can run.