Launch

Launch is a compute cluster consisting of 45 Dell nodes, 35 CPU and 10 GPU, each with two AMD EPYC 9654 (Genoa) CPUs (192 cores); the GPU nodes add two NVIDIA A30 GPUs. It is particularly well suited to batch and interactive research computing across CPU and GPU workloads, and is often used for general-purpose simulation, data analysis, and portal-based interactive work.

Submitting Jobs Documentation

You can run jobs at different sizes and durations on Launch. 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.

Launch uses the Slurm scheduler. Submit resource-intensive work to the compute nodes; the two login nodes are for editing, compiling, file management, and other light work, where interactive processes are limited to one hour of CPU time and eight cores in total.

Submit a job script with sbatch, list your jobs with squeue -u $USER, cancel one with scancel, and check its efficiency after it finishes with seff. CPU jobs run on the default partition and need no partition flag; GPU jobs must request --partition=gpu with at least one GPU, for example --gres=gpu:a30:1 (up to two A30s per node). If you do not request memory, Slurm gives 1024 MB per CPU. Run sinfo to see the current partitions and their limits.

If you prefer not to write a Slurm script, the Drona Workflow Engine and the portal's Interactive Apps generate and submit jobs for you through a graphical form.

See the [Launch Batch System] guide, the [Drona Workflow Engine] guide, and the portal [Interactive Apps] guide for more information.

Queue specifications

Queue CPU cores / node GPUs / node Num nodes Node RAM
CPU compute node
The default partition for CPU-only work
2x AMD EPYC 9654 (192 cores) N/A 35 384 GB
gpu
Jobs that need GPU acceleration
2x AMD EPYC 9654 (192 cores) 2 NVIDIA A30 (24 GB vRAM) 10 768 GB

Storage Documentation

Launch provides global file space available from all compute and login nodes. Storage is organized into home, scratch, and project filesystems. Use showquota to view current scratch and project/group quotas. Scratch and Project storage are not backed up. For detailed information, view the Launch [File Systems] guide. 

File System

Directory Path Quota Purge Backup Notes
Home $HOME 10 GB, 10,000 files Backed up nightly Small files, scripts, editing
Scratch $SCRATCH 1 TB, 250,000 files Not backed up Temporary work space
Project $PROJECT 5 TB, 500,000 files Purged 90 days after allocation expires Not backed up Shared project space

File Transfer Documentation

Globus is the recommended way to move data to and from Launch; it handles large or many-file transfers and works without an SSH login. For a few small files, the [HPRC Portal file browser] is simplest, though not for files over 2 GB. Launch has no direct SSH login, so scp, sftp, and rsync cannot reach it from your computer; see the [HPRC File Transfer guide] for details.

Supported Methods Data Transfer Node / Globus Collection Notes
GLOBUS | RECOMMENDED ACCESS TAMU LAUNCH DTN Launch Globus Documentation
HPRC PORTAL FILE BROWSER Launch Portal