Computing Resources

As a member of the uWaterloo Applied Math Fluids Group you have access to a fairly substantial array of computing resources. These are correct as of August 2024.

Digital Research Alliance of Canada

Digital Research Alliance of Canada (formerly, Compute Canada) is perhaps the largest supplier of computing services available to us, and it provides significant computing power. To begin, you will need to create a Compute Canada account (follow instructions on the Compute Canada page). Account creation will require approval from your supervisor. The main components of Compute Canada that are relevant to us are: SHARCNet, SciNet, and WestGrid.

SciNet

Niagara

Niagara is another large system run by Compute Canada. Our group does not have dedicated resources, but that need not stop you from running anything there. For information on the Niagara system and hardware, see documentation here and here.

Westgrid

Cedar

We have essentially no experience with this system, but it's a thing. Documentation is here.

MFCF-administered Systems

The Math Faculty Computing Facility (MFCF) provides a central computing environment for the Faculty (excluding Computer Science). It also maintains several Linux/Unix servers that belong to the Fluids group. These servers are much smaller in scale than the Compute Canada clusters (typically tens of processors), but they are hosted locally and can be very useful tools for running smaller simulations or getting your code working properly before scaling up to Compute Canada. The MFCF staff are also very helpful regarding software installation and general computing problems / questions.

It is important to understand that these machines do not all run the same operating system. They also have different compilers, numerical libraries, MPI libraries, and so on. In order to build and run models such as SPINS, MITgcm, and IGW, your environment must be set up appropriately for each machine. The recommended shell control files (.cshrc, .profile) provided by MFCF do that for you automatically. In some cases you may wish to choose different options (e.g. different version of gcc, different MPI library), but the recommended shell control files align with the model configuration files published in this wiki.

Fluids-owned machines

hood

More information can be found here.

bow, minnewanka, waterton (the "mountain lakes")

These are (2017) systems with high-speed interconnects and are managed through the SLURM scheduler (see Graham Tips for some useful SLURM-related commands). More information can be found here.

kesagami, kuujjua

These (2018) systems are intended primarily to run the IGW model.

sutton, peleee, rondeau (the "provincial parks")

See details here.

Faculty-wide machines

The central shared computing environment comprises numerous Linux and Windows servers and a small number of GPU servers. Even if you do not use those machines, the central file server is a smart place to store a copy of your important work, such as your thesis in progress, for safety. The central file service "files.math" is accessible via the Mac mini provided to you by the department, as well as via ssh/scp to the shared Linux machines.

Lab Systems

Lab machines are maintained by lab members (currently Andrew Grace), not MFCF. Accounts should exist for Fluid Lab members (if you don't have one but would like one, ask Aaron / your supervisor). Some standard software is installed.

Note: these machines do not have a queue system, so please compute responsibly and do not swamp the machines.

Belize2 (formerly Boogaloo)

belize2 can be accessed either in-person in the Fluids Lab or via ssh with yourUserID@boogaloo.math.uwaterloo.ca. See our wiki page for information on the available hardware. Boogaloo has both CPU and GPU capabilities.

Onyx

Onyx (2018) is a Windows machine that is primarily intended for visualization. Both VisIt and ParaView are installed and should be GPU-aware. This machine should be used in-person to perform high-powered visualization of your datasets. Onyx is not intended for heavy computation, but is capable to running CUDA models.

Belize3

belize3.math.uwaterloo.ca (2021) is a high-power Linux workstation co-managed by MFCF. It has a moderate GPU in addition to two server-class multi-core CPUs.