Tempest Research Cluster

Overview

Tempest is a High Performance Computing (HPC) research cluster at MSU and the largest supercomputer in Montana. Tempest features powerful high-memory compute systems, GPUs, a fast storage system, support for long-running workloads, and an interactive web interface with graphical desktops, RStudio, JupyterLab, file transfer,  and easy workload submission functionality . RCI provides training and full support for the Tempest HPC system. Tempest is available via a buy-in model with a free access tier for all MSU researchers and instructors. 

Tempest accounts can be requested by completing the New User Request Survey

Instructors can request Tempest access for a class by completing the New Class Request Survey 

RCI offers open office hours in Renne 324 each Thursday from 9:00am to 12:00pm. Stop by for assistance with any of our services! 

Office hours will continue through winter break, except for December 26th.

Documentation

Getting Started

• Quickstart
• Getting started online
• Getting started in the terminal

Accessing Tempest

Tempest has two tiers of access: a free-access tier, and a buy-in tier. The Access page provides comprehensive documentation about getting a Tempest account and logging into Tempest.

Software

Our software documentation covers module usage, container creation, and software installation.

Jobs and Workloads

• Common workflows using web applications:
  • Web Desktop
  • Building and submitting jobs
  • Jupyter Labs
  • RStudio
• Submitting jobs in the terminal

Domain-specific workflows and documentation provides the code snippets to demonstrate the usage via examples.

System Information

For more details on hardware, partitions, and tiers, visit the Systems page

Technical Specifications 

Tempest is an HPC cluster consisting of EPYC X86 CPU and Nvidia GPU nodes. In total, Tempest currently has 12,264 logical CPU cores, 55.9TB of ECC memory, 26 Nvidia A40 GPUs, 14 Nvidia A100 GPUs, and 12 Nvidia H100 GPUs. For storage, Tempest currently has 600TB of all-flash high-speed storage. Tempest components are interconnected by 100/50/25Gb Ethernet with RDMA.

If you would like to see a more detailed description of cluster resources, please see our technical description of computational resources. 

If you would like to add a section about RCI into your next grant, feel free to use our template cluster description for research grants.

Citation

All Tempest users are requested to cite Tempest and RCI in publications resulting from research involving computational work performed on the system. Please use the following for citation purposes when referring to the use of Tempest computing resources in your research: 

Computational efforts were performed on the Tempest High Performance Computing System, operated and supported by University Information Technology Research Cyberinfrastructure at Montana State University.

Support

 To learn more about buying-in to Tempest or to receive technical support, email tempest-support@montana.edu.