Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing

VPAC operates a state of the art High Performance Computing (HPC) Facility providing advanced computing support to researchers within our Member Universities, Research Organisations and Industry.

The VPAC Supercomputing Facility represents one of the most versatile and powerful installations in Australia. The facility is highly secure and reliable and can be accessed securely and seamlessly. The VPAC Facility has a wide range of software installed, including software applications for: Computational Chemistry, Geophysics, CFD & Engineering, Climate Modelling & Earth Systems, Bioinformatics, Maths Libraries and Statistics and Mathematics Environments.

VPAC Supercomputers

• Brecca - Queue info - Usage
• Wexstan - Queue info - Usage
• Edda - Queue info - Usage
• Tango - Queue info - Usage

VPAC reports the total counted usage for VPAC Member machines.

High Performance Computing (HPC) uses parallel supercomputers, clusters and grid networks which provide exceptional levels of processing speed and power compared to desktop and monolithic mainframe systems. Any task which can be most effectively resolved by segmenting the problem into a number of parallel tasks can be efficiently carried out by a VPAC supercomputer.

More likely that you will gain a cost-effective competitive advantage by using VPAC's expertise and computing power. HPC systems at VPAC are highly optimised by our expert staff to ensure maximum performance. VPAC support staff will also provide assistance in using your specialist programs, reducing research and product development time.

At present there are hundreds of researchers from Victorian Universities and Research Organisations making use of the VPAC facilities for highly calculation-intensive tasks. This is particularly the case in Mathematics, Engineering, Geophysics, Health and Life Sciences, Spatial Information and Grid Computing.

Consultancy & Design

VPAC has extensive experience in designing, purchasing and managing High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions for operations ranging from a small to large scale and offers assistance to clients who wish to integrate HPC into their current operations. VPAC conducts a full requirements analysis to determine areas that may benefit from HPC and to improve current in-house processes around the management and use of compute servers.

The following Clusters are operated by VPAC on behalf of clients:-

• Wembley - on behalf of Holden Innovation
• Windsor - on behalf of Holden Innovation
• Karros - on behalf of the Automotive CRC

Whilst 'supercomputer' has no precise definition, it is generally accepted to be meaning any system, at the time of its introduction, is highly ranked in various metrics.

In the 1960s supercomputers were typically fast (for their time) scalar processors. In the 1970s most were running vector processors. In the 1980s they were typically a number of vector processors running in parallel. For more than a decade, supercomputers have typically meant a cluster of massive parallel processing systems with specialised interconnects. This is the sort of "high performance computing" facilities offered at VPAC.