Policies and guidelines governing Picotte are determined by the URCF Board of Governance based upon input from the elected faculty members and senior technical support staff. Use of Picotte is restricted to non-commercial academic use. 

The URCF Governing Board (the Board) reserves the right to terminate accounts and otherwise restrict access to Picotte subject to a vote by the Board.

Definitions:

A Principal Investigator (PI) is defined as a research-active faculty member holding a full-time appointment at Drexel University.

A Service Unit (SU) is the basic measure of resource usage. See the rate sheet posted to the URCF web site for details on how each resource is measured in SUs and the cost of one SU.

Types of Allocations:

There are four categories of SU allocations: Basic, Investor, Educational, and Supplemental.

Those who have exceeded or lack these allocations may be terminated and/or have resource restrictions imposed subject to a vote by the Board.

I. Basic Allocations

All PIs receive a no-cost basic allocation for HPC resources. For the July 2019 – June 2020 fiscal year, the Basic Allocation is 7,305 SU per month. Unused basic allocations do NOT rollover from month to month and are forfeited if not used during the month of allocation. This option provides faculty immediate access to the shared resources of the Picotte cluster including compute nodes, GPUs, and basic storage. A Drexel PI may designate users who may share their allocation, including but not limited to postdocs, grad students, undergraduate students, and K-12 students/teachers. Basic allocations may be subject to resource restrictions (# of concurrent CPUs, storage, etc.) as determined by the Board.

II. Investor Allocations

Investors can obtain additional SUs on Picotte by: a) purchasing of Picotte cluster-compliant hardware or b) purchasing of cluster time/storage (cases are differentiated below). Purchased SUs will contribute to the maintenance and expansion of the cluster, while purchased nodes will immediately augment the cluster.

a. Purchase of Equipment (typically $12K or above)
Faculty are encouraged to purchase one or more Picotte-compliant nodes for integration into the cluster. Researchers will receive, as a credit to their account, a number of SUs equivalent to the cost of the purchased equipment. Purchased nodes are not subject to the F&A/indirect-cost rate, providing a substantial cost savings over direct purchase of SUs.   

b. Purchase of SUs (typically less than $12K)
Faculty who require more than the basic allocation level may purchase additional SUs directly. When budgeting computational resources for a grant, an SU purchase should be listed as “Purchased Services: Computer Use” and is subject to F&A/indirect-cost rate.  SU usage will be deducted from the budgeted fund’s designated cost-center on a monthly basis.

III. Educational Allocations

Faculty who teach courses that can benefit from Picotte access may apply to the Board for a grant for each course. An application, consisting of a course syllabus, must be submitted by drop day of the quarter prior to that in which the course will be taught.  Educational grants may be subject to resource limitations.

IV. Supplemental Allocations

Brief proposals for additional SUs can be submitted by a Drexel PI at any time. Proposals are reviewed on a monthly basis and are subject to approval by the Board based upon scientific merit, resource availability, current and pending support, and prior results. Applicants are strongly encouraged to provide preliminary data to justify the requested allocation. A supplemental allocation application form can be found on the URCF web site.

V. Exceeding Allocations

Faculty whose use exceeds their allocation will be expected to obtain another allocation via purchase or grant. When an overage occurs, PIs will be contacted by URCF to resolve the matter. If neither a purchase nor grant proposal is received in a timely manner, the Board reserves the right to limit or suspend the PI’s account and access subject to a Board vote.