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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Here you can get answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. The site is under construction and more questions and answers will be added on an ongoing basis.

Access to the national HPC facilities

There are 5 different types of national calculation systems. They are all described here.

The national resources at the 5 national HPC facilities are financed by the universities and the Ministry of Education and Research jointly with 50 per cent each.

During 2021, Danish researchers will have access to 5 different types of calculation facilities, regardless of their scientific background and previous experience. You can read more about the 5 HPC types here. Type 1 og 2 are already in operation.

You can contact your local Front Office if you are a new user and need support. You can also apply for compute time through your local resource committee, the national resource committee or the international resource committee. The procedure for this is described in this video.

The Resources Committee is responsible for allocating compute time on the various national supercomputers. There are two representatives from each university, and broad representation of both professional groups and gender is intended. See the composition of the resource committee here.

Yes. Each university has a share of the computing time at the national facilities and can allocate resources to users directly or refer to computing time at the national or international level.

You can apply continuously through your own university, at the so-called Front Office, and twice a year via specific "calls" from the national resource committee. See more in the video here.

More than 800 scientific publications have been collected that have used national HPC. Here you can get an insight into which scientific disciplines have used supercomputers.

There are also podcasts and more than 50 pilot projects, which also describe some of the scientific fields that have used national computing power. Both the social sciences, humanities, life sciences and physics are represented. Read more here og here.

Front Office is the place to go for local support at your own university regarding access to HPC facilities. Here you also get guidance on how to get calculation time on a facility and how HPC can be used in research and teaching. Optimization and help with code and data will be a collaboration between the user and Front Office to find the right help. See more about contact information here.

Back Office is the technical staff of the national HPC facilities. Back Office takes care of e.g. of moving large amounts of data, processing GDPR and sensitive data, technical issues with facilities, software, hardware and more. Problems that Back Office cannot handle are e.g. optimization problems with code, or if you have run out of computation time. See more about contact information here.

Other facilities than national HPC

Yes. See more information here.

Yes. See more information here.

The National HPC Resource Committee. See more information here.

Data

Data management should preferably be something that has been decided on before the research project starts in a so-called Data Management Plan (DMP). Read more here.

There are many data types, and many different qualities and degrees of importance. The most important data should be FAIR and live up to the FAIR principles. Read more here.

Where and how you store data depends on the universities' data policy. Universities offer infrastructure where data can be stored while you work on the project. It is normal that not all data is completely FAIR before any sharing and publication. But it should be the goal that your data is made as FAIR as possible when the research results are published.

It depends on the university's data policy as well as on the publishing journal's policy in the field. Universities typically have the ability to store researchers' data after a project is completed. While some journals have the condition that data attached to the article is also published.

It depends on the data policy of the individual university.

It depends on your own and your university's policies in this area.

Read, among other things “The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship” here.

The FAIR principles are about data and metadata. FAIR aims to ensure that data is both (F) indable, (A) ccessible, (I) nteroperable and (R) euseable. More detailed information on the FAIR principles can be found her.

You can contact the local research support unit at your university.

No, it's not. Not all data can be open, but it can still be FAIR. If a project is about sensitive personal data in, for example, the healthcare sector, then data cannot be published. But datasets can still have detailed, machine-driven metadata, so it is possible for other researchers to find out what the dataset contains, whether they have rights to access it, or how they can possibly apply for it.

It depends on the university's data policy.

It depends to a large extent on the university's data policy. However, you should refer to the use of national HPC in your scientific publications under “Acknowledgments”. In this way, we can measure which sciences have used national HPC. Guideline available here (Coming soon).

Yes.

Possibly. It depends on the university's data policy.

Yes.

Strategies and policies

DeiC stands for Danish e-Infrastructure Coorporation. The universities and DeiC are collaborating on the establishment and operation of the national HPC landscape, which will ensure the necessary and sufficient computing power for Danish research now and in the future. The universities handle operations and development, while DeiC has a coordinating role. DeiC also plays a role in data management, as well as providing infrastructure services (eg Zoom and the Research Network). You can read more about DeiC here.

DeiC's board consists of people from the management team from all 8 universities, and the board sets the direction for the work that DeiC coordinates nationally and internationally within infrastructure for Danish research. You can see DeiC's board here.

HPC Forum is established as an advisory body in DeiC with reference to DeiC's Board of Directors. Through its advice, the HPC Forum shall stimulate and strengthen the development of common national services and activities in the field of HPC, based on the principle that investments in digital infrastructure for research and education must be coordinated, utilized and operated efficiently. There are members from all 8 universities. The members have a research background and thorough technical knowledge of HPC and are experienced HPC users. You can see the composition of the HPC forum here.

Revised
06 Sep 2021