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Welcome To Viper!

Viper is the University's supercomputer in 2024 , often termed an HPC (or High-Performance Computer).

It is located on-site with a dedicated team to operate Viper and support users.

• New user
  • With no knowledge of Viper
  • Who already knows what Viper is
  • Are you a DAIM MSc student needing to use Viper for your project?
• Existing Users
  • Looking for further information?
  • Need support?

What is a supercomputer?

A supercomputer has a much higher processing power than a general-purpose computer. Viper is composed of:

• 180 compute nodes, each with 28 processing cores and 128GB of memory
• 4 high memory nodes with 1TB of memory
• 5 GPU nodes with 3 Nvidia A100s, 4 A40s and a twin P100.
• 2 Visualisation nodes

Why is Viper useful?

• Many jobs can be run at once.
• These jobs can be split into tasks and run in parallel.
• Or these jobs can be run with many different scenarios in parallel.
• Using Viper frees up your personal computer.
• Viper has significant resources that your desktop computer does not.

Who might use Viper?

Viper is currently being used for:

• Astrophysics
• BioEngineering
• Business Analysis
• Computer Science
• Geographical research
• Artificial Intelligence
• And many more

Quickstart

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you run your first job. Feel free to skip any topics you may already be comfortable with.

1. What is Viper
2. Apply for an account (Student portal)
3. Getting Connected
4. Linux command line
5. Using Modules
6. Interactive Sessions
7. Slurm
8. Batch Jobs
9. Data Management
10. Virtual Environments
11. Tutorial Videos

Support

• User Drop-in Sessions are held every Wednesday from 09:30 to 10:30 am on Teams.
• There is a selection of Tutorial Videos to help get you started using Viper.
• In the Support Portal you can find forms to request VPN access, report an issue with a job, request a software install, and request a runtime extension.

Further Topics

Further Topics