Services

PSC provides a variety of services to satisfy your research needs. In addition to computing power, we offer consulting services, mass storage capabilities, high-speed networking expertise and access, biomedical computing support, visualization services and training.

High performance computing grants

By obtaining a grant of computing time, you can use one of our high performance computing systems for your research. You can apply for a grant in several ways:

• Through the NSF's Teragrid, we provide free computing grants for United States researchers who are involved in non-proprietary research. Grants of time for the Cray XT3 and the Rachel are currently available through this program.

• Under an agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we provide free computing grants for Pennsylvania researchers who are involved in non-proprietary research. We recommend that users who would be eligible for grants under the NSF Cyberinfrastructure and the Pennsylvania programs apply for a grant under the NSF program.

• Scientists conducting biomedical research may apply for a grant under the National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing.

• Businesses can enhance and support their technical corporate computing capabilities by applying to PSC's Corporate Affiliates program. High-tech firms headquartered in Pennsylvania are especially encouraged to apply.

• PSC is a partner with the DOE, the National Energy Technology Laboratory and several regional universities in the Supercomputing Science Consortium, (SC)². If you wish to apply for a grant under the (SC)² program, please go to the (SC)² grant information page.

Corporate Affiliates Program

The PSC Corporate Affiliates Program provides its industrial partners the expertise and services to enhance and support their corporate technical computing capabilities and to exploit high performance computing technologies. With over twelve years experience in both operating an integrated high performance computing facility and in developing applications of this technology to solve critical research, engineering, and business problems, PSC can put this expertise, as well as the high performance computing and communications facilities themselves, to work for you. Because of the wide array of products and services we offer, our programs are customized to meet the particular needs of our partners.

Consulting

Our consulting staff can help with technical problems, such as code optimization or even advice on configuring and supporting clustered workstation systems.

Individual one-on-one consulting is available to provide support for all phases of problem evolution from inception to final results. This can include software recommendations, formulation of the problem, or optimization of a single processor performance, as well as communications support.

PSC's hotline is manned by experienced consultants who can answer technical questions about all aspects of the center. Follow-up within one working day to electronic mail questions is guaranteed.

Education, Outreach, and Training

PSC's Education, Outreach and Training program promotes the understanding of supercomputing and its application in today's leading-edge scientific research.

To facilitate this understanding, PSC provides training, technical expertise and access to high-performance computing facilities to K-12 students and teachers and both the university-level and corporate research communities.

Workshops on parallel computing topics are offered on a regular basis. Upon the request of corporate clients, a module on "Recommended Programming Practices" was developed, which teaches engineers and researchers a standards-based, best-practices approach to software engineering.

NRBSC gives workshops on biomedical computing.

Any of the workshops that PSC offers can be held at PSC or at your location.

Networking Expertise

The Networking group studies high-speed network performance and can consult on :

• design, engineering, testing, maintenance and general support for the hardware associated with production and experimental network infrastructure

• implementation, maintenance, tracking, and monitoring network and system security

• diagnosing and troubleshooting internal and external network connections.

They also provide software to tune TCP implementations or to monitor and analyze your network.

Network Access

The Three Rivers Optical Exchange provides high-speed access to both commodity and research sites in western and central Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing

The NRBSC pursues leading edge research in high performance computing and the life sciences, and fosters exchange between PSC expertise in computational science and biomedical researchers nationwide.

NRBSC's focus is two-fold: computational biomedical research and outreach to the national biomedical research community through education and publications.

Visualization Services

PSC visualization experts can transform your data into images, slides or animations and and will advise you on the use of graphics software.

Mass Storage Capabilities

Besides maintaining data generated at PSC, we can provide storage for data generated at external sites. Virtually unlimited storage is available, supported by a dedicated archival system, which includes both rotating mass storage and two silos equipped with cartridge tape drives. High speed links transport data between our major computing platforms and the dedicated mass storage system.

PSC can provide data storage and retrieval for both daily operations and archival applications.

Contact the Corporate Relations office for more information on storing externally generated data at PSC.