C3HPC: HPC on-demand
C3HPC (Cloud Computing Center for HPC) is the on demand service for HPC resources launched by eXact lab in collaboration with Carnia Industrial Park. C3HPC leverage on a powerful and efficient medium size HPC infrastructure which is devoted to provide HPC resources for the SME companies located in FVG region and beyond. Our approach is to support our local customers through a strong personal interaction in all aspects of their HPC operations and offer a wide range of services to ensure our customers success. By actively involving companies, industrial and academic partners, C3HPC is not only providing dedicated and ad-hoc services, but it is becoming a local center of expertise and knowledge on the issues of business development through the use of HPC systems.
The initiative launched three years ago is delivering HPC on-demand services to several clients (among them KND). The initial infrastructure was extensively used by MHPC students to test the system and consolidate its power and its degree of availability and use.
Nowadays, the effort is aimed at growth and the further development and expansion of the system in terms of computing capacity, to ensure more resources and performance, trying to intercept the needs of the market demand. This will be done thanks to the direct support of FVG region which recently approved and funded the proposal we submitted on POR FESR 2014-2020 Call 2.3.b.1.
HPC configuration
The actual cluster configuration, based on an Eurotech Aurora system, is the following:
- 15 liquid cooled blade system with 2 CPUs each
- 8 nodes equipped with 2 K20v GPGPU (16 in total)
- 360 core for about 1 Terabyte RAM, 15 TF
- Gbe, FC, IB 4X QDR
- 50 Mbps (Up/Down) up to 1Gbps external connectivity
- 40 TB Lustre parallel storage over IB
- 1+1 redundancy (for all critical components)
- Full stack of scientific software available by means of module and/or container
- OpenStack (IaaS) stack with 80 cores and 20TB ceph FS over IB
- 2 additional 1U computing node acquired by project POR FESR 2014 – 2020. Asse II – Promuovere la competitività delle PMI. Azione 2.3

C3HPC services
- Pay per use approach at different level (core/h – storage)
- Resource reservation (cores/storage )
- Full HPC stack support team
- Peak outsourcing & management
- Scientific and technical application customization and optimization
- Data management services (including back-up and archiving)
- Remote visualization services (Viznode)
- Provisioning Virtual servers for customized solutions
- Industrial knowledge & competence center (training)