the front of the NVIDIA DGX Superpod rack mounted in the SMU Data Center.

ColdFront

A Secure Campus Network or VPN Connection is Required for ColdFront Access.

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ColdFront

ColdFront logoColdFront is an application that helps manage HPC resource allocations. It allows authorized individuals to create new projects, request HPC compute and storage resources for specific research projects, and assign users to collaborate on those projects. ColdFront automates the provisioning of new users onto HPC, enabling them to start working and collaborating more quickly.

The O’Donnell Data Science and Research Computing Institute (ODSRCI) works with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to provide the computational and digital data infrastructure necessary to support research endeavors of SMU’s faculty, researchers, and students.  Access to a shared high-performance computing cluster, called M3, is available to SMU researchers. This cluster features state of the art CPUs and GPUs, accelerators, networking, and storage technologies—making it one of the fastest high-performance computing environments of any private university campus in Texas. The other HPC platform available is the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD. Installed in 2022, the DGX superPOD is specifically tailored for cutting-edge research in the fields of AI and machine learning.


Eligibility and Access

While almost anyone with an SMU ID and password can login to Coldfront, only certain user groups will have the ability to use the software and access the HPC clusters.

  • Benefit-eligible employees and all faculty are allowed to create a project for individual or group research AND/OR sponsor a project for a course. We have built out the integration for courses so that all students enrolled in the course will be provisioned for the related project automatically. Once the project is created, there is a workflow that is initiated to review and allocate the appropriate cluster resources for each project.
  • Students can interact with projects to which they have been assigned. If you are interested in a new personal project on the clusters, please reach out to the HPC team to discuss. (contact info?)
  • Anyone with an SMU ID can be associated with a sponsored project. The manager of the project is responsible for adding and removing users as needed.

Please Note: All new users must first agree to the Guidelines before access is granted to the clusters.