News

News

Latest News

• 25 Feb. 2021 - Next major maintenance window on 08 March 2021: Please have a look at the maintenance page for details on our planned work and how it affects you.
• 12 Feb. 2021 (Update 22 Feb. 2021) - SSH Connection Stability: If you recently started experiencing that your ssh connection is breaking up after a few minutes of being idle, please check the settings below for you ssh configuration for ALICE. If this does not solve the issue, please contact the ALICE Helpdesk.
  • for Linux, MacOS, Windows using OpenSSH command line connection: Make sure you use "ServerAliveInterval 60" and "ServerAliveCountMax 3" to your ssh config settings.
  • MobaXterm: Go to Settings -> SSH -> SSH settings and enable "SSH keepalive"
  • PuTTY: Go to Settings -> Connection -> Set a non-0 value in "Settings between keepalives" (e.g., 60)
• 25 Jan. 2021 - Outlook for ALICE in 2021: We have updated the section outlining our expansions plans for ALICE in 2021 (Future plans). Two major items this year will be the addition of a new parallel file storage system and the expansion of the GPU nodes. But there is more on our agenda, so stay tuned...
• 08 Jan. 2021 - SURF HPC Workshops: SURF is offering HPC-related workshops on various topics. You can find a list of upcoming workshops (and more) on the SURF website (Link). Workshops of interest to HPC users are:
  • Webinar Introduction Supercomputing
  • Webinar Introduction HPC Cloud
  • Using the Amsterdam Modeling Suite in HPC systems
  • SURF Research Week

Older News

For older news, please have a look at the news archive: News Archive

Maintenance

This section is used to announce upcoming maintenance and provide information before, during and after it. For general information about our maintenance policy, please have a look here: To maintenance policy

Next Maintenance

The next major maintenance window will be on 8 March 2021.

What are we going to do?

• We will integrate an NVIDA Tesla T4 GPU into login node 2. We have purchased two GPUs, i.e., one for each login node. We will start with login node 2 because there are generally fewer users on it.

What does this mean for you?

• We will have to take login node 2 offline in order to integrate the GPU.
• All active connections, screens or tmux sessions will be terminated.
• We hope that we can bring login node 2 back until noon.
• After a testing phase, we will make the T4 available and announce details on it use.

Do you have questions?

Please contact the (ALICE Helpdesk)

Previous Maintenance days

• 01 Feb 2021
• 02 Nov 2020
• 05 Oct. 2020

Publications

Articles with acknowledgements to the use of ALICE

Astronomy

• Effects of stellar density on the photoevaporation of circumstellar discs, Concha-Ramirez, F. et al., MNRAS, 501, 1782 (February 2021), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3669
• Lucky planets: how circum-binary planets survive the supernova in one of the inner-binary components, Fagginger Auer, F. & Portegies Zwart, S., eprint arXiv:2101.08033, Submitted to SciPost Astronomy (January 2021), https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2021arXiv210108033F/arxiv:2101.08033
• Trimodal structure of Hercules stream explained by originating from bar resonances, Asano, T. et al., MNRAS, 499, 2416 (December 2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2849
• Oort cloud Ecology II: Extra-solar Oort clouds and the origin of asteroidal interlopers, Portegies Zwart, S., eprint arXiv:2011.08257, accepted for publication by A&A, (November 2020), https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2020arXiv201108257P/arxiv:2011.08257
• The ecological impact of high-performance computing in astrophysics. Portegies Zwart, S., Nature Astronomy, 4, 819–822 (September 2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1208-y.

Computer Sciences

• Better Distractions: Transformer-based Distractor Generationand Multiple Choice Question Filtering, Offerijns, J., Verberne, V., Verhoe, T., eprint arXiv:2010.09598, (October 2020), https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.09598

Leiden researchers and their use of HPC

• Identifying Earth-impacting asteroids using an artificial neural network. John D. Hefele, Francesco Bortolussi and Simon Portegies Zwart. Astronomy & Astrophysics, February 2020.

News articles featuring ALICE

• Hazardous Object Identifier: Supercomputer Helps to Identify Dangerous Asteroids, Oliver Peckman, HPC Wire, 04 March 2020, link
• Elf reuzestenen op ramkoers met de aarde?, Annelies Bes, 13 February 2020, Kijk Magazine, link
• Leidse sterrenkundigen ontdekken aardscheerders-in-spé, NOVA, 12 February 2020, link