Account Allocation Policy

The computer systems managed by the Supercomputing Facility are available for use to university faculty, staff, and students who require large-scale computing capabilities. Access to and use of such systems is permitted only for academic research and instructional activity. All other use is strictly prohibited without the approval of the supercomputing steering committee. Please see the Acceptable Use Statement for more information.

The IBM p575 cluster (IP name 'hydra') is the primary computing platform available for your use. All applications for Hydra must be approved by the facility's steering committee. The intended use of Hydra is for applications that clearly require a "large scale" computational capacity and can execute scalably in parallel. You must select each system you would like to use on the application form. Access to the Linux workstations, which are support systems, must be sent to help@sc.tamu.edu. Account applications are available on our web page at:

Three types of accounts are available: Basic, Small Research, and Large Research. Basic accounts are small grants designed to enable any user to begin their research and to become familiar with the machines. More time may be obtained by applying for Small and Large Research accounts. The account types and their features/restrictions are summarized in the table below.

If you are a student in need of more CPU time because you've exhausted your basic account allocation, your Principal Investigator, or PI (typically your advisor), will need to apply for a small research account. If you know that the CPU hours provided by the basic account are insufficient at the time of your basic application, go ahead and apply for the basic account anyway and have your PI apply for a small research account at the same time. After your PI's small research account is approved, and after you exhaust the CPU hours in your basic account, you will be switched over to the small research account.

Large Research grants are reviewed and approved by the High Performance Computing Steering Committee. How well the code has been optimized (parallel and scalar), publication potential, and whether or not the research has outside funding are factors which are considered in making allocation decisions. You must provide this information in your Large Research application.