Expanse CPU

Expanse CPU has 728 AMD EPYC Rome nodes with 128 cores and 256 GB RAM each. Suited for parallel CPU workloads that scale across many nodes.

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Jobs

Expanse uses the Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM) batch environment. When you run in the batch mode, you submit jobs to be run on the compute nodes using the sbatch command as described in the Expanse User Guide. 

https://www.sdsc.edu/systems/expanse/user_guide.html#narrow-wysiwyg-7

Remember that computationally intensive jobs should be run only on the compute nodes and not the login nodes. A node-exclusive job that runs on a compute node for one hour will be charged 128 SUs (128 cores x 1 hour).

Queue specifications

Metrics updated 2026-06-16

Name Purpose Nodes CPU cores / node GPUs / node Node RAM Jobs
30 days
 Wait Time
30-day trend
 Wall Time
30-day trend
compute Compute Node Usage 734 AMD EPYC 7742 (128 cores) — 256 GB 22,468
compute wait time: average 1.0 hours, range 0 to 8.9 hours over 30 days
compute wall time: average 4.4 hours, range 0.7 to 8.7 hours over 30 days, wall-time limit 48h
debug Priority access to shared nodes set aside for testing of jobs with short wall time and limited resources 2 AMD EPYC 7742 (128 cores) — 256 GB 13,426
debug wait time: average 0.0 hours, range 0 to 0.3 hours over 30 days
debug wall time: average 0.0 hours, range 0 to 0.3 hours over 30 days, wall-time limit 30m
preempt Non-refundable discounted jobs to run on free nodes that can be pre-empted by jobs submitted to any other queue 726 AMD EPYC 7742 (128 cores) — 256 GB 1,494
preempt wait time: average 0.5 hours, range 0 to 2.8 hours over 30 days
preempt wall time: average 0.7 hours, range 0 to 24 hours over 30 days, wall-time limit 168h
large-shared Single-node jobs using large memory up to 2 TB (minimum memory required 256G) 4 AMD EPYC 7742 (128 cores) — 2 TB 154
large-shared wait time: average 6.3 hours, range 0 to 40.3 hours over 30 days
large-shared wall time: average 9.0 hours, range 0 to 24 hours over 30 days, wall-time limit 48h
shared Jobs using part of a single 256 GB node, sharing the node with other jobs. 734 AMD EPYC 7742 (128 cores) — 256 GB 857,326
shared wait time: average 1.7 hours, range 0.3 to 7.3 hours over 30 days
shared wall time: average 0.9 hours, range 0.2 to 3.1 hours over 30 days, wall-time limit 48h

Datasets

Name Description
OceanTopography

OpenTopography provides efficient, user-friendly access to high-resolution topography data, processing tools, and resources to advance understanding of the Earth's surface, vegetation, and built environment.
OpenAltimetry

OpenAltimetry is a web based data visualization and discovery tool for exploring surface elevation profiles over time using satellite altimetry data from NASA's ICESat and ICESat-2 missions.
OpenForest4D

OpenForest4D is a web-based platform that leverages multi-source remote sensing data and artificial intelligence to generate on-demand, research-grade estimates of forest structure and above-ground biomass in four dimensions for global forest monitoring. 

Storage

File System

Directory Path Quota Purge Backup Notes
Scratch Lustre /expanse/lustre/scratch 10 TB 90 days after allocation expiration. No backups stored. This is not an archival file system, it is not backed up, and will be purged according to purge policy.
Scratch Compute Node /scratch/$USER/job_$SLURM_JOB_ID 1 TB Users only have access to these SSDs during job execution at the local file system path to the compute node.
Home /home 100 GB N/A 8 week rolling backup The home directory is limited in space and should be used only for source code storage. Jobs should never be run from the home file system, as it is not set up for high performance throughput.

External Storage

In addition to the local scratch storage, users will have access to global parallel filesystems on Expanse. Every Expanse node has access to a 12 PB Lustre parallel file system and a 7 PB Ceph Object Store system, 140 GB/second performance storage. For more information on this see the Expanse User Guide - https://www.sdsc.edu/systems/expanse/user_guide.html#narrow-wysiwyg-10

File Transfer

Data transfer on expanse is done through Globus 

For more information on data transfer see the Expanse User Guide 

https://www.sdsc.edu/systems/expanse/user_guide.html#narrow-wysiwyg-9

Supported Methods Data Transfer Node URL
GLOBUS /expanse/projects