Financial terms of access to the computing resources of the mésocentre
The general principle that governs access to the resources of the technological platform mésocentre is free access for all staff of AMU and its academic partners (universities and EPST), especially those located in the region Sud (PACA).
The mésocentre (its development, its functioning, and its renewal, operated by the Centre de Calcul Intensif d’Aix-Marseille, CCIAM) requires substantial (of the order of M €) and regular funding which is most often acquired through various national calls for projects (PIA) or requests for subsidies (CPER, FEDER, etc.), but also by the following sources of income:
- Service intended for a company or a non-academic partner, in the form of an allocation (in cpu hours) and support. A quote (*) must be requested from mesocentre-admin@univ-amu.fr.
- Service intended for an academic team benefiting from funding for a scientific project (national, European, etc.) that must justify its complete costs. A quote (*) can be produced on request at mesocentre-admin@univ-amu.fr. Depending on the administration in charge of the financial management of the project, indirect management fees may be applied.
- Service intended for an academic team wishing to invest in the shared equipment of the mésocentre. To maintain a certain homogeneity of computing resources, this financial participation is generally hoarded on a multi-year line of credit and is used to supplement a larger investment. For more information or in case of special material need, please contact mesocentre-admin@univ-amu.fr.
Any service translates into increased priority access to resources, while maintaining reasonable job queueing times for all the mésocentre users. The allocation obtained is guaranteed and can be consumed at any time, until the end of the scientific project concerned.
Investment in the mésocentre strengthens the sharing of resources. Thus, an involved project-team benefits in particular from :
- the significant reduction in their maintenance costs (hard and soft) of their own resources as well as the associated costs (HR, electricity, cooling, fittings of specialized rooms, etc.);
- access to often larger / various computing resources (CPU, GPU, visualization, large memory, dev, interconnection, quick access storage, etc.) than those available in the project-team;
- access to larger software resources (compilers, mathematical libraries, etc.);
- access to the mésocentre technical committee (mesocentre-techn@univ-amu.fr) and to a community of users with various expertise.
Access to the resources of the mésocentre requires submitting a project here.
(*) To facilitate the preparation of the quote, please provide the following information, if applicable: customer (name, address, contact name, email, SIRET, telephone, intra-community VAT); desired allocation (in hours.cpu); support desired (in hours).