computing

A computer cluster consists of several individual computers that are connected and essentially function like a single system. Clusters are primarily designed with performance in mind to allow for complex simulations, providing parallel data processing and high processing capacity, under a centralized management, where tasks are controlled and scheduled through a software.

At XpertScientific, we use a version of the Floquet Computing Cluster.

Technical specifications:
  • Rocks cluster 6.1
  • 15 compute nodes with 190 cores an 1.5TB of RAM.
  • NFS server node with 110TB.
  • All nodes connect to GPFS with Infiniband (40Gbs).

To see some recent examples for modelling projects carried out by XpertScientific, please visit our modelling projects page.

Pricing

The cost of a modelling project can be divided into two main categories:

  1. Model development/programming/data analysis: If you would like us to develop and program the model, we will charge this either at an hourly rate or at a fixed project-negotiable rate, which will be specified in the project budget quote. Other related services, like the analysis of any simulation data, will fall into this category.
  2. Model execution/data storage & transfer: While this cost may be negligible for many small modelling projects, certain types of models require a significant amount of processing power and storage capacity, which are charged separately based on the price table below.

Small projects

We define small projects as models that do not require any parallel computing and can be accommodated on a single CPU core, i.e., these models can run on a single core of a multi-threaded CPU with 4GB of RAM memory per core. Many of our projects fall into this category.

Examples: Examples 2-4 from our modelling projects page were carried out on a single core. Other examples that typically fall into this category include: parasite infectivity modelling, 1D ocean/atmospheric/ecological models, numerical PDE solvers, risk modelling, optimizations, etc.

Computing cost: no separate charge (the cost is typically included in our hourly consulting fee)

Data storage & transfer cost: data storage and transfers from our servers are included up to 100GB per month. For additional storage and transfer needs, the cost is €0.09 per GB.

Medium projects

We define medium-sized projects as models that require parallel computing on more than one core, but where the requirements do not exceed 8 cores and 4GB of RAM memory per core.

Examples include: 3D regional ocean/atmosphere/ecosystem models, genomic analyses, complex solvers and optimizations, etc.

# cores memory GB cost €/hour
280.12
4160.25
8320.52

Data storage & transfer cost: data storage and transfers from our servers are included up to 100GB per month. For additional storage and transfer needs, the cost is €0.09 per GB.

Big projects

We define big projects as models that require parallel computing on 12 or more cores, but where the requirements do not exceed 40 cores and 4GB of RAM memory per core.

Examples include: global ocean/atmospheric/ecosystem models, complex genomic analyses, Big Data, etc. A more concrete example is Example 1 from our modelling projects page, which was carried out on a cluster with 16 cores.

# cores memory GB cost €/hour
16641.08
321282.25
401602.78

Data storage & transfer cost: data storage and transfers from our servers are included up to 100GB per month. For additional storage and transfer needs, the cost is €0.09 per GB.

Huge projects

We define huge projects as models that require parallel computing on more than 40 cores at 4GB-16GB of RAM per core.

Examples include: global ocean/atmospheric/ecosystem models, complex genomic analyses, Big Data, etc.

# cores memory GB cost €/hour
642564.88
6497611.18
128195220.18

Data storage & transfer cost: data storage and transfers from our servers are included up to 100GB per month. For additional storage and transfer needs, the cost is €0.09 per GB.