Using Triton in Your Grant Proposal

Instructions for including Triton Resource in a grant proposal

The costs for using the Triton Resource should be included in Other Direct Costs (ODCs).
The costs for using the Triton Resource are based on units of computation called "base Service Units" (SUs). See below for an explanation of SUs and how to estimate costs.
Your financial person needs to add the applicable Indirect Cost (IDC) to get the final budgeted amount.
See below for a brief description of the Triton Resource that you can use in your budget justification. You can also review the Triton Resource Web site if you require more information to include with your proposal.
Please contact tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu if you require a letter of support for your proposal, or if you need more information.

Description of the Triton Resource

The Triton Resource at the San Diego Supercomputer Center is a high performance computing system supporting researchers at the University of California. The Triton Resource consists of two subsystems: The Triton Compute Cluster (TCC) and the Petascale Data Analysis Facility (PDAF). Both are supported by a high performance parallel file system and have connectivity to high bandwidth research networks.

The TCC is a 256-node Appro HyperGreen cluster. Each node contains dual quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 (formerly code-named Nehalem) processors running at 2.4 gigaHertz, and 24 gigabytes of main memory. The nodes are interconnected with a 10 gigabit-per-second Myrinet fabric. The TCC has a peak theoretical performance of 20 teraflops and six terabytes of memory.

The PDAF is a unique data-intensive computing resource with one of the largest main memory capacities of any publicly available system. The PDAF comprises 28 Sun x4600M2 symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) nodes. Each node contains eight quad-core AMD 8380 processors running at 2.5 gigaHertz. Twenty of the nodes have 256 gigabytes of main memory per node and eight of the nodes have 512 gigabytes of main memory. The PDAF nodes are interconnected with a 10 gigabit-per-second Myrinet fabric. The PDAF has a peak theoretical performance of nine teraflops, and nine terabytes of memory.

Estimating Costs for Using the Triton Resource

The costs for using the Triton Resource are based on a unit of computation called a "base Service Unit (SU)." One base SU is equal to one (1) core-hour of computation on the TCC at a 2.4 GHz processor clock rate. Estimating the number of base SUs required for your grant requires knowledge of the computational requirements of your software code or examples from previous experience. Please contact tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu if you require assistance in estimating the required number of base SUs.

The pricing for use of the Triton Resource by UC researchers is as follows

TCC: $0.06 per base SU.
PDAF (256GB node): 2X exchange rate. That is, two (2) base SUs are required to achieve one (1) core-hour of computation on a 256GB node.
PDAF (512GB node): 4X exchange rate. That is, four (4) base SUs are required to achieve one (1) core-hour of computation on a 256 GB node.

Notes

For individual PIs or projects, there is a minimum initial purchase of $3,250 (54,167 base SUs) and a minimum subsequent purchase of $812 (13,533 base SUs). The minimum purchase has been reduced to $500 (8333 base SUs) initial and $250 (4167 base SUs) subsequent through June 30, 2011.
PDAF nodes require a minimum reservation of 128GB of main memory, which equates to 16 processor cores on the 256GB nodes and eight processor cores on the 512GB nodes. Users are encouraged to reserve full PDAF nodes for their projects.

Examples

A computational code is estimated to require 75,000 base SUs on the TCC.
- "Unburdened" cost is equal to 75,000 base SUs * $0.06/base SU = $4,500.
- IDC rate is 54.5% (current rate for on-campus research projects).
- Final budgeted cost is $4,500 * 1.54 = $6,930.
A computational code is estimated to require 100,000 core-hours on the PDAF-256 node.
- Because the exchange rate on the PDAF 256GB nodes is 2X, this project will require 200,000 base SUs to achieve 100,000 core-hours of computation on the PDAF 256GB node.
- Unburdened cost is equal to 200,000 base SUs * $0.06/base SU = $12,000.
- IDC rate is 54.5%.
- Final budgeted cost is $12,000 * 1.54 = $18,480.

Contact Information

Please inquire with tapp-mgr@sdsc.edu for more 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.