Frequently Asked Questions about TAPP
Following are some questions you may have (and their answers!) about the Triton Affiliates and Partners Program. For more details, contact your local TAPP Administrator, or see the Triton Resource Web site.
TAPP FAQ
What is the Triton Resource?
The UCSD Triton Resource at SDSC is a new high-performance, data-centric compute resource for UC researchers system-wide. Triton is also available to other academic, government, and industry organizations on a limited basis. The resource features exceptional data analysis capabilities and short wait times at a very reasonable cost to users. More information is available at the Triton Resource Web site.
How does using the Triton Resource work?
Approved users are given accounts with a specific allocation of computational capacity measured in "base service units" or "base SUs". One Base SU is equal to one hour of computing time using one processor core on the main Triton Compute Cluster. The user environment is typical for a Linux cluster system and many common tools are provided for compiling codes and running compute jobs. See the Triton Resource Web site for more information.
What is the Triton Affiliates and Partners Program (TAPP)?
TAPP is the primary program for gaining access to the Triton Resource. TAPP has two sub-programs: Central Campus Purchase and Direct Purchase. Central Campus Purchase is a sub-program in which several UC campuses have elected to pre-purchase substantial blocks of computing capacity for use by their faculty and researchers. Each campus participating in TAPP has its own procedures for faculty and researchers to request allocations. To find out if your campus is participating in TAPP and to learn more, please contact tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu or your campus TAPP administrator, whose name can be found on the TAPP UC Campus Administrators page.
Individual faculty & researchers from UC or other universities, as well as government and industry, may directly purchase computational capacity on the Triton Resource using funding from grants or other sources. In the case of UC faculty & researchers, a request may be made to tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu and a transfer of funds can be arranged through the SDSC business office. Government and industry organizations may procure capacity on Triton by entering into UCSD's standard service agreement.
Can I gain access to Triton through the TAPP program?
Please inquire with tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu to find out if your campus is participating in TAPP in the current state fiscal year. If not, you can still gain access as an individual researcher at reasonable rates.
How does the Triton Resource differ from high performance computing systems available through the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid resources?
The Triton Resource is generally intended to have lower utilization rates and hence shorter waits-in-queue than major NSF systems such as those in TeraGrid. Although there is a usage charge for Triton, there is no proposal process and qualified users are guaranteed access to the Triton system. The large memory PDAF nodes are quite a unique resource for data-intensive computing tasks. The NSF does provide access to petascale computing systems for very large computing requirements, however.
How does the Triton Resource differ from commercial cloud computing services such as Amazon's EC2?
Triton has been designed from the ground up as a high performance Linux cluster computing system, whereas EC2 is a networked collection of virtualized commodity servers designed to serve a variety of purposes. Although virtual clusters can be run on EC2, the "heavy lifting" of setting up the cluster environment using Amazon machine images is left to the user. The interconnect fabric of EC2 is undocumented, whereas Triton utilizes a high performance Myrinet interconnect fabric which should be far superior in supporting parallel computations requiring low latency communications between processing nodes.
The hardware specifications for each Triton node are superior to the "high CPU extra large" EC2 instances and are available to UC users at a lower rate. In addition, there are no bandwidth charges or storage charges for short-term storage for Triton (longer-term storage will be available at reasonable rates on Triton's Data Oasis, expected early next year).
How do I ask questions or get more information?
Please send email to tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu or visit the Triton Resource Web site.
Contact Information
Contact your TAPP campus administrator for information on the status of your campus
Submit a help ticket to request pricing for your project or to ask about resources.
