High Performance Computing


Research Computing supports all UVA researchers who are interested in writing code to address their scientific inquiries. Whether these programming tasks are implemented interactively, in a series of scripts or as an open-source software package, services are available to provide guidance and enable collaborative development. RC has specific expertise in object oriented programming in Matlab, R, and Python.

Examples of service areas include:

  • Collaborating on package development
  • Reviewing and debugging code
  • Preparing scripts to automate or expedite tasks
  • Developing web interfaces for interactive data exploration
  • Advising on integration of existing software tools

UVA has three local computational facilities available to researchers: Rivanna, Afton, and Ivy. Depending upon your use case, privacy requirements, and the application(s) you need to run, we can help you create an account and start processing your data.

Afton

Standard Security HPC Cluster

Afton is the University of Virginia's newest High-Performance Computing system. The Afton supercomputer is comprised of 300 compute node each with 96 compute cores based on the AMD EPYC 9454 architecture for a total of 28,800 cores. The increase in core count is augmented by a significant increase in memory per node compared to Rivanna. Each Afton node boasts a minimum of 750 Gigabytes of memory, with some supporting up to 1.5 Terabytes of RAM memory. The large amount of memory per node allows researchers to efficiently work with the ever-expanding datasets we are seeing across diverse research disciplines. The Afton and Rivanna systems provide access to 55 nodes with NVIDIA general purpose GPU accelerators (RTX2080, RTX3090, A6000, V100, A40, and A100), including an NVIDIA BasePOD. The Afton and Rivanna platforms share storage systems of over 8 Petabytes and a stack of pre-installed software packages available for computational research across many disciplines.

Rivanna

Standard Security HPC Cluster

Rivanna is one of the University of Virginia's High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. After hardware upgrades and expansions in 2019, the Rivanna supercomputer currently has 603 nodes with over 20,476 compute cores. The Rivanna and Afton systems provide access to 55 nodes with NVIDIA general purpose GPU accelerators (RTX2080, RTX3090, A6000, V100, A40, and A100), including an NVIDIA BasePOD. Both platforms share storage systems of over 8 Petabytes and a stack of pre-installed software packages available for computational research across many disciplines.

Ivy

High-Security / HIPAA Computing Environment

Ivy is a secure computing environment for researchers consisting of virtual machines (Linux and Windows) backed by a total of 83 nodes and approximately 3000 cpu cores. Researchers can use Ivy to process and store sensitive data with the confidence that the environment is secure and meets HIPAA, FERPA, CUI or ITAR requirements.