About

The mission of the Laboratory for Advanced Computing (Laboratório de Computação Avançada - LCA) at University of Coimbra is to support the research efforts of scientists performing research which needs high-performance computing, as well innovation activities from enterprises which need this technology. In addition, LCA provides support for advanced computing courses within the University.

To accomplish this, LCA engages in the following activities:

• Evaluates, acquires and deploys high performance computing resources, including network, managing, storage and computing systems as well as software.

• Offers training workshops and seminars to educate and prepare new users of these resources.

• Provides expert consulting and documentation to assist researchers in using these resources effectively.

• Collaborate with other computing centers and other Universities to enhance the capabilities of the resources in use at the Laboratory.

The Laboratory for Advanced Computing deploys and operates the computational infrastructure enabling research activities of faculty, staff and students at University of Coimbra.

LCA has supported researchers from other Portuguese Universities and research centers by launching nationwide calls for CPU time in the cluster Milipeia until 2014. Presently the calls are made by FCT/FCCN through the Portuguese National Network for Advanced Computing (Rede Nacional de Computação Avançada - RNCA) for the recent cluster Navigator+. LCA also provides consulting, documentation and training for users of these resources.

LCA resources include:

• High Performance Computing (HPC) systems of a variety of architectures to enable larger simulations, data analyses and faster computation times than are possible using computers available to individual researchers.

• Data Storage/Archival systems to store data that result from performing simulations on HPC systems.

Please reference the Laboratory for Advanced Computing in any research report, journal or publication that requires the citation of any author's work. Recognizing the resources at the center is important for acquiring funding for new resources. The minimal content of the citation should be:

Laboratory for Advanced Computing
University of Coimbra

Our suggested acknowledgement is:

The authors acknowledge the Laboratory for Advanced Computing at University of Coimbra for providing {HPC, computing, consulting} resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. URL: https://www.uc.pt/lca

For projects submitted under RNCA national call for resources please acknowledge referring

• <Advanced Computing Project yyyy.xxxxx.CPCA.Ax>
• <FCT I.P.>
• <Platform>

Example: "This work was produced with the support of UC-LCA and it was funded by FCT I.P. under the project Advanced Computing Project yyyy.xxxxx.CPCA.Ax, platform Navigator."

External Advisory Committee

Management Team

The current LCA team is composed of two faculty members of Universidade de Coimbra, one being the LCA director, plus a lead technical person and a full-time system administrator. A help desk is in place with a ticket system. The tasks of the management team include: supervision the operation of the computer and storage systems advice over the installation of software and HPC libraries and tools manage the administrative tasks related to the infrastructure and to PRACE organization of an annual user forum and special training events for particuar scientific communities external network issues, namely the local University network, country network managed by the Portuguese NREN FCCN and PRACE network International relations (Europe - PRACE. EuroCC - and outside Europe)