Anvil GPU

Anvil GPU is a compute cluster consisting of 16 nodes, each with four NVIDIA A100 GPUs and two 64-core AMD EPYC 7763 processors with 512 GB of memory. It is particularly well suited for work that keeps several GPUs busy at once, and is often used for model training, inference and GPU-accelerated simulation. It includes a great deal of AI and machine learning software, with CUDA-enabled builds of the common frameworks loaded through the module system.

Submitting Jobs Documentation

You can run jobs at different sizes and durations on Anvil GPU. The following lists the different queues that you can submit to, describing how many nodes you get, how long you can run, the type of resources you get, and the average wait time.

Jobs are submitted through the Slurm scheduler. Run batch jobs with sbatch, start interactive work with srun or salloc, or launch an application through Open OnDemand.

GPU work is charged against a GPU allocation, not your CPU allocation, and the allocation name is given with -A. Always name the partition with -p: gpu-debug shares a node between jobs, while gpu gives exclusive access to the GPU nodes. No more than 12 GPUs may be in use per user and 32 per allocation at one time.

Per-queue wall-clock limits are in the queue table; if you do not set one, the partition default applies, which scontrol show partition reports.

For more information about running jobs on Anvil, see [Anvil Running Jobs].

Queue specifications Documentation

Metrics updated 2026-09-29

Queue	CPU cores / node	GPUs / node	Num nodes	Node RAM	Max wallclock	Wait time 30-day trend	Wall time 30-day trend	Number of jobs run 30 days
gpu-debug Short GPU test and debugging runs, with priority access so you wait less. Use it before submitting production work.	2x AMD EPYC 7763 (128 cores)	2 Nvidia A100 (40 GB vRAM)	16	512 GB	30m			502
gpu Production GPU runs that need the whole node and all four GPUs to themselves.	2x AMD EPYC 7763 (128 cores)	4 Nvidia A100 (40 GB vRAM)	16	512 GB	48h			4,168

Software Documentation

The following software packages are among the most frequently used on Anvil GPU, based on job data from XDMoD.

Most Frequently Used

Application	Description	Research Discipline	Jobs
python	Python is a high-level, interpreted programming language known for its simplicity and readability. It supports multiple programming paradigms and has a vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks.	Computer & Information Sciences, Software Engineering, Systems & Development	5,762
amber	Amber is a suite of highly extensible molecular simulation programs. It is designed for simulations of biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates, and can also be used for small molecules.	Biological Sciences	2,237
namd	NAMD (NAnoscale Molecular Dynamics) is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems. It is optimized for the simulation of biomolecular systems containing millions of atoms.	Biochemistry and Molecular Biology	719
gromacs	GROMACS (GROningen MAssive Parallel MD for Molecular Dynamics) is a versatile package for molecular dynamics simulations with a strong emphasis on high-performance computing capabilities.	Biological Sciences	556
oxdna			50
lattice boltzmann			19
cp2k	CP2K is an open-source quantum chemistry and solid state physics software package designed to perform atomistic simulations of solid-state, liquid, molecular, and biological systems. It can be used to study a wide range of properties, including electronic structures, molecular dynamics, and vibrational spectra.	Physical Sciences	11
vmd	Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) is a molecular visualization program for displaying, animating, and analyzing large biomolecular systems using 3-D graphics and built-in scripting.	Biological Sciences	11
bwa	Burrows-Wheeler Aligner (BWA) is a software package for mapping low-divergent sequences against a large reference genome, such as the human genome. It consists of three algorithms: BWA-backtrack, BWA-SW, and BWA-MEM. The BWA-backtrack algorithm is designed for Illumina sequence reads up to 100bp, while BWA-SW and BWA-MEM are for longer Illumina reads, including 100bp reads produced by the HiSeq 2000 platform.	Biological Sciences	5
lammps	LAMMPS (Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator) is a classical molecular dynamics code designed for simulating large-scale atomistic systems. It is highly versatile and can be used to model a wide range of materials and complex molecular structures.	Chemical Sciences	4

Storage Documentation

Anvil has three storage areas for your own data: Home for personal files, scripts and small software; Scratch for high-speed job input and output; and Projects for data shared across your allocation.

Scratch is temporary, and deletions there are silent and permanent, with no warning and no way to recover a file. The snapshots on Home and Projects are not backups, so keep a separate copy of anything you cannot lose.

Run myquota to check your usage on each file system, and flost to recover a file from a snapshot. For more information see the [Anvil File Management] guide.

File System

Directory	Path	Quota	Purge	Backup	Notes
Home	$HOME	25 GB	Never purged	Snapshots only, retained 60 days	ZFS. Area for personal software, scripts, compiling and editing. There is no limit on the number of files. Snapshots live on the same hardware as the primary copy and are not a backup - back up anything you cannot lose.
Scratch	$SCRATCH	100 TB, 1,048,576 files	Purged 30 days after last access	Not backed up	GPFS. Working space for job input and output, not long-term storage. Deletions here are silent and permanent - there is no warning email and no way to recover a file.
Projects	$PROJECT	5 TB, 1,048,576 files	Purged 90 days after allocation expires	Snapshots only, retained 60 days	GPFS. Shared across your allocation for project data. Reached via $PROJECT or $WORK. Snapshots live on the same hardware as the primary copy and are not backups; backup anything you cannot lose.
Applications	/apps	See notes	Never purged		ZFS. Read-only area holding the software Anvil installs centrally. Not user storage, so no quota applies.
Datasets	/anvil/datasets	See notes	Never purged		GPFS. Read-only collection of community datasets curated by Anvil. Not allocated to users and not counted against your quota.

External Storage Documentation

Anvil Object Storage is a separate software-defined storage system offering object storage for large or long-lived research data - shared datasets, long-term outputs, and data used by containerized or cloud-integrated workflows. It complements the ZFS and GPFS tiers rather than replacing them.

For more information see [Anvil Object Storage].

File Transfer Documentation

Use Globus for large transfers or transfers with many files - it retries and resumes on its own. Use scp, rsync or sftp for smaller command-line transfers.

Anvil does not publish a separate data transfer node: command-line transfers go to the login host, anvil.rcac.purdue.edu, and need an SSH key set up first.

For more information see [Anvil Transferring Files].

Supported Methods	Data Transfer Node / Globus Collection	Notes
GLOBUS \| RECOMMENDED	ACCESS Anvil	Anvil Transferring Files
SCP	anvil.rcac.purdue.edu	Anvil Transferring Files
RSYNC	anvil.rcac.purdue.edu	Anvil Transferring Files
SFTP	anvil.rcac.purdue.edu	Anvil Transferring Files

Login to Anvil GPU Documentation

2FA/MFA required for login

Full instructions are in [Anvil Logging In].

Before your first login you need an active Anvil allocation and an ACCESS account with Duo two-factor authentication enrolled. Anvil does not issue its own accounts, so there is nothing separate to register for.

Your Anvil username is not your ACCESS ID: it is your ACCESS username with x- in front of it, so ACCESS ID jdoe logs in as x-jdoe.

SSH to Anvil is key-based - password authentication is not supported. If you have not set up a key yet, sign in to Open OnDemand with your ACCESS credentials first, open a terminal there, and add your key.

SSH Login

$ ssh x-<access-username>@anvil.rcac.purdue.edu

Anvil Logging In

ACCESS OnDemand Login

How do I use ACCESS OnDemand?

Anvil User Guide - Logging In

Datasets Documentation

Name	Description
AI	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ai/index.html
Covariates	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Covariates/index.html
Geospatial	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/geospatial/index.html
Hydrological	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hydrological/index.html
iGenomes	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/igenomes/index.html
Meteorological	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/meteorological/index.html
GeoAI	https://datasetdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/geoai/index.html