Updated 2020-09-30

PACE-ICE (Instructional Cluster) Orientation

This orientation is offered at the beginning of each semester and scheduled individually depending on the class.

Click here for PACE-ICE Orientation Slides

What's ICE?

Note

First things first: Yes, this source is completely fee and available to any Georgia Tech Faculty member to teach classes/workshops etc. All you need is to apply in advance with course specific information. If you are interested, please read on :)

In 2018, PACE initiated a project called “Instructional Cluster Environment (ICE)” to build instructional clusters to support educational efforts per a high demand campus-wide. These resources offer an educational environment that’s identical to production clusters, and expected to provide thousands of grad/undergrad students with ample opportunities to gain first-hand scientific computing experience including HPC and GPU programming each year. Furthermore, the entire PACE scientific software repository is made accessible to all ICE students, providing an education environment that mirrors production research clusters in every aspect.

In addition to credit-bearing courses, ICE enables PACE team to develop or host hands-on tutorials and workshops to help GT researchers and students improve their computational skills, in accordance with GT’s strategic plan that states “In addition to traditional classroom experiences, we will explore the possibility of enabling faculty, students and staff to interact in venues such as short courses and workshops where a shared culture of innovation, collaboration and leadership can evolve.”

Currently there are two ICE clusters with important differences:

  1. PACE-ICE: Campus-wide service funded by PACE, requires application process. Funded partly by a Technology fee grant and partly PACE budget.
  2. COC-ICE: COC specific service for COC classes and those that are cross listed with this department. Funded by Technology fee grant by COC.

How to Apply to Use ICE for Your Classes

If you are from a department other than COC: please fill out this form to send an application

If you are teaching a COC class, or if your class is cross listed with this department: please directly contact David Mercer (david.mercer@cc.gatech.edu)

All GT faculty are potentially eligible for using ICE resources for their classes, but the application mechanism is necessary to ensure fair use of limited resources. Once the applications are collected, PACE identifies which classes can be supported and how much resources to allocate for each department (not class). The decision is communicated to departments in advance to schedule orientation sessions and completing queue configurations.

Important Dates for Spring 2021 (Subject to Change)

Spring 2021

Information Sessions:

  • To Be Determined

TBD: Application deadline

Note

This is not a hard deadline, but we may not be able to guarantee availability of resources on the first day of classes for later applications.

January 6th, 2021: Announcement of approved classes

January 2021: Orientation/Training for Professors/TAs, scheduled depending on availability

(the first day of Summer term is May 11th, 2020)

ICE Resources

(last update: Septmember 2020)

PACE-ICE

  • 9 196 GB Xeon 6226 with 2.7 GHz 24 processors nodes
  • 3 384 GB Xeon 6226 2ith 2.7 GHz 24 processors and 2 Tesla V100 16 GB GPUs nodes
  • 10GB per user storage, backed up daily.

COC-ICE

  • 15 196 GB Xeon 6226 with 2.7 GHz 24 processor nodes
  • 1 384 GB 2.7 GHz 24 processor node
  • 8 384 GB 2.7 GHz 24 processor with 2 Teasla V100 16 GB nodes
  • 3 762 GB 2.7 GHz 24 processor node
  • 4 196 GB Xeon 6248 2.5 GHz with 1 Tesla V100 32 GB nodes
  • 4 196 GB Xeon 6248 2.6 GHZ with 4 Tesla V100 32 GB nodes
  • 10GB per user strorage, backed up daily.