University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Software, Support and Services

Tools and Services

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High Performance Computing (HPC)

Category: Computer and Device Support High Performance Computing Productivity and Business Audience: Faculty Researchers Staff Students

OIT and the School of Medicine (SOM) are partnering with CU Boulder Research Computing (CURC) to provide compute resources for researchers on the CU Anschutz campus.

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Welcome to HPC

This collaboration facilitates multidisciplinary discoveries and support for the university community to help advance research productivity and conduct world-renowned research. Progress in our campus' mission and vision in the area of research depends on a stronger data infrastructure including the analysis and interpretation of large and complex data resources. The Alpine HPC is a supercomputing cluster housed in Boulder and is centrally funded by the Chancellor for CU Anschutz faculty, researchers, staff, and students. Watch the two-minute highlight of the ribbon cutting ceremony.

The CU Boulder Research Computing (CURC) team has an established computational infrastructure and is already supporting the Alpine research compute environment. This comprehensive supercomputing environment is for large dataset processing and analysis and is equipped with:

More than 18,000 cores (free of charge, except for the PetaLibrary)
382 compute nodes
Access to AMD GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, and high memory nodes

For researchers that need additional compute resources, a buy-in opportunity for more dedicated resources will be made available. In addition, research data storage services are available from the CURC PetaLibrary. Information about PetaLibrary costs and additional options for backing up data can be found at The PetaLibrary webpage on the CU Boulder Research Computing website.

* Please note: Alpine is not a HIPAA compliant system and no highly confidential data should be analyzed or stored on Alpine. For additional information about classifying sensitive university data, visit the CU Office of Information Security's Data Classification webpage.

System Access

Complete the following steps to start the process for access to the new HPC system:

Request access to Alpine by completing the End User Agreement (EUA).
Once the process to onboard users to Alpine begins, an email will be sent to you confirming that access to the HPC system has been approved.
Training will be conducted by the research compute group in Boulder via Zoom. Onboarding classes are offered monthly and sign up information for the training sessions will be available in the confirmation email.

Training Resources

Getting Started

Our partnership leverages the expertise of the CU Boulder Research Computing team to deliver a robust HPC environment including support and training. Visit the CU Boulder OIT Research Computing webpage to learn more about additional resources and documentation. The CURC has extensive how-to instructions and help documents including:

Training opportunities are available from the CURC team - visit their Events and Training webpage for an up-to-date schedule.

CU Anschutz HPC Learning Opportunities

Office Hours
Office hours to discuss high performance computing topics are held by the CU Anschutz HPC Bioinformatics Technical Analyst from 9:30 - 10:30 a.m. every Monday. Join the virtual meeting via Zoom and email hpcsupport@cuanschutz.edu with topic questions.

AI/Machine Learning Education Series for Spring Semester, 2024
- NVIDIA and Mark III Systems are hosting an AI/Machine Learning Education Series for CU Anschutz from Thursday, January 25, through Thursday, May 2. This bi-weekly education series is 100% virtual and will include both tutorials and virtual "rapid labs" for attendees delivered via Jupyter Notebook. There will be a series of sessions that will feature industry experts in Machine Learning who will dive into current trends around AI/ML. Visit https://trending.markiiisys.com/cu-anschutz-ai-2024 for more information and to register for the trainings.

GitHub Site
The CU Anschutz HPC GitHub site addresses the technical components of Alpine. The site provides a repository of CU Anschutz HPC content and Alpine related topics.

Microsoft Teams Site
CU Anschutz offers an Alpine HPC Active Users Microsoft Teams site to share HPC resources, successes, and provide peer-to-peer help. Request to join the Teams site.

Need additional assistance?

Additional resources also are available at the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) community portal to learn about frequently asked research computing questions and shared best practices with other HPC Users.

For general questions about the availability of the HPC Alpine system or additional information about high performance computing, contact the CU Anschutz High Performance Computing (HPC) team at hpcsupport@cuanschutz.edu.