HLRN

Since 2021 GWDG and the University of Göttingen have been one of eight Centers for National High Performance Computing (NHR Centers) nationwide. For GWDG and the University of Göttingen this represents a continuation of the HLRN project, in which additional funding is now available for computing resources, research, teaching and user consulting. The special focus is on expanding competencies in the areas of life sciences, earth system sciences, fluid mechanics, AI and Big Data, and digital humanities. Here, GWDG forms the NHR-North together with the ZIB and their joint expert consulting network.

The North German Supercomputing Alliance (Norddeutscher Verbund für Hoch- und Höchstleistungsrechnen - HLRN) was founded in 2001 by the merger of the six federal states of Berlin, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. In 2012 Brandenburg has joined the HLRN. The HLRN network is part of the national HPC infrastructure and jointly operates a distributed supercomputer system located in two operating centres University of Göttingen and Zuse Institute Berlin. The Göttingen site is operated by the GWDG.

Currently, GWDG operates the NHR system Emmy (HLRN-IV). Since October 2020, the second phase has been in operation, which made it necessary to move to a modular data center. The HPC team is heavily involved in its planning and operation. Details of the HLRN-IV system can be found on the HLRN web pages.

The HLRN systems are used in particular by scientists at universities and institutions in the participating federal states, but are also available to researchers outside the federal states network. Depending on the institutes affiliation, different user fees apply. Generally, computing time on the HLRN systems is allocated within the framework of large-scale projects. For a major project an application must be submitted, which is reviewed by the Scientific Commitee and -in the best case- approved. For the preparation of this application, individual user accounts with limited computing resources can be applied for.

One of the outstanding aspects of the HLRN is the supra-regional, interdisciplinary operating competence network, which supports users during the whole process of the project application, project lifetime, as well as project extension. The competence network consists of experts from different application areas of scientific computing. The GWDG has one local expert advisor as the first point of contact for users on site and seven expert advisors from various fields.