Overview

Important Announcement

Dear users,

As of June 2025, we have discontinued the RRN. Moving forward, for research computing, we recommend using the High Performance Computing (HPC) systems provided by the Digital Research Alliance (DRA) of Canada. These systems (CPU and GPU clusters) are free for all researchers. For information on how to get started, see the DRA Getting Started Guide.

Among the DRA clusters, the Niagara cluster, maintained by SciNet at the University of Toronto, is a great starting point. See the Niagara Quickstart for more details.

SciNet has also introduced Open OnDemand (OOD), a user-friendly web-based system that allows you to launch interactive or batch jobs directly from your browser. OOD is especially suitable for beginners, and we encourage new HPC users to explore it. See the OOD Quickstart for instructions.

Our lab has contributed to a memory upgrade of two OOD nodes, each now equipped with 1TB of RAM. Rotman users with large memory needs will have high-priority access to these nodes.

Coming Soon: SciNet is launching a powerful new cluster called Trillium, expected to be available in July 2025. Users with large computational needs are encouraged to explore this upcoming resource.

Rotman Research Node

Rotman Research Node (RRN) is a shared Linux server for the Rotman research community. The node is equipped with 32 cores, 512G memory, and 25T project storage. It is an integrated part (login node) of a High-Performance Computing (HPC) system consisting of a cluster of around 100 compute nodes. Researchers can work directly on the Rotman node, but also have the option to scale up their computation by submitting large workloads to the compute nodes on the HPC system. Currently, default Rotman users have access to 8 compute nodes via a “standard” partition (a partition is a logical set of compute nodes). Each compute node has 24 CPUs and 240G memory. These compute nodes are also shared by researchers from another university.

RRN is hosted at Centre for Advanced Computing (CAC). Rotman TD Management Data and Analytics Lab (TDMDAL) provides 1st-tier user support. Email if you have any questions about the system.

About this User Guide

This User Guide focuses on use cases most relevant to Rotman researchers. It complements the CAC Wiki document, which covers the usage of the entire CAC HPC system in details. We encourage users with high computation needs to further read the CAC Wiki in order to take full advantage of the HPC system.