High Performance Computing

Category: Computer and Device Support OIT - Categories OIT - Type of software Productivity and Business Audience: Faculty Researchers Staff Students
OIT and the School of Medicine (SOM) are partnering with CU Boulder Research Computing (CURC) to provide compute resources for researchers on the CU Anschutz campus.
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Welcome to HPC

This collaboration will facilitate multidisciplinary discoveries and support for the university community to help advance research productivity and conduct world-renowned research. Progress in our campus' mission and vision in the area of research depends on a stronger data infrastructure including the analysis and interpretation of large and complex data resources. The Alpine HPC is a supercomputing cluster housed in Boulder and is centrally funded by the Chancellor for CU Anschutz faculty, researchers, staff, and students. 

The CU Boulder Research Computing (CURC) team has an established computational infrastructure and is already supporting the Alpine research compute environment. This comprehensive supercomputing environment is for large dataset processing and analysis and is equipped with:

  • 16 compute nodes with 64 CPU cores each
  • 4 NVIDIA GPU nodes with 3 A100 GPUs each
  • Additional nodes will be added
  • 10 TB scratch space per user included
  • Network: 25Gb+ interconnects

For researchers that need additional compute resources, a buy-in opportunity for more dedicated resources will be made available. In addition, research data storage services are available from the CURC PetaLibrary. Information about PetaLibrary costs and additional options for backing up data can be found at The PetaLibrary webpage on the CU Boulder Research Computing website.  

* Please note: Alpine is not a HIPAA compliant system and no secure data should be analyzed or stored on Alpine. For additional information about classifying sensitive university data, visit the CU Office of Information Security's Data Classification webpage.

You're Invited - Celebrating our partnership on June 8, 2023!

Join CU Anschutz and CU Boulder Research Computing at 11 a.m. on Thursday, June 8, to celebrate our collaboration at the CU Boulder Center for Innovation & Creativity. Chancellor Don Elliman and Chancellor Phil DiStefano will begin remarks at 11:30 a.m. followed by timed tours of the supercomputer container, snacks and an introduction to high performance computing. Register today. 

System Access

Complete the following steps to start the process for access to the new HPC system:

  1. Request access to Alpine by completing the End User Agreement (EUA).
  2. Once the process to onboard users to Alpine begins, an email will be sent to you confirming that access to the HPC system has been approved.
  3. Training will be conducted by the research compute group in Boulder via Zoom. Onboarding classes are offered monthly and sign up information for the training sessions will be available in the confirmation email.

Training Resources

Getting Started

Our partnership leverages the expertise of the CU Boulder Research Computing team to deliver a robust HPC environment including support and training. Visit the CU Boulder OIT Research Computing webpage to learn more about additional resources and documentation. 

HPC Office Hours

Office hours to discuss high performance computing topics are held by the CU Anschutz HPC Bioinformatics Technical Analyst from 9:30 - 10:30 a.m. every Monday. Join the virtual meeting via Zoom and email hpcsupport@cuanschutz.edu with topic questions.

In addition, CU Anschutz has partnered with NVIDIA to develop trainings specifically suited for the scientific computing needs of the campus from noon to 1 p.m. every Thursday from May 4 through June 15. Register for one session or the entire series. Additional training opportunities are available from the CURC team - visit their Events and Training webpage including calendar information about Zoom office hour availability for those who are new to using HPC.

Already an Alpine user?

CURC has extensive how-to instructions and help documents for using Alpine:

CU Anschutz offers an Alpine HPC Active Users Microsoft Teams site to share HPC resources, successes, and provide peer-to-peer help. Request to join the Teams site. You can also visit the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) community portal to learn about frequently asked research computing questions and shared best practices with other HPC Users. 

Need additional assistance?

If you have questions about the upcoming availability of the HPC Alpine system or need additional information, contact the CU Anschutz High Performance Computing (HPC) team at hpcsupport@cuanschutz.edu.