1. Acknowledging the ViCAR in your publications:

All forms of publication, including web pages, resulting from work done using ViCAR resources should include the following citation.

“The authors acknowledge the Visualization and Computation Advancing Research (ViCAR) Center at the North Carolina A&T State University for providing computing resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this publication. URL:”

2. ViCAR Account, Resources and Support Allocation:

ViCAR user account and technical support are allocated with level-1 access based on the faculty request and their collaboration interests with CDSE department faculty. This level-1 tier consists of 80 CPU Cores 1024 GPU cores, 1 TB data storage and up to 100 CPU core hours.. The technical support is limited in this case as we have funding for only one Research System Administrator. The level-1 might get ViCAR Run Time with a waiting job-queue time. In turn, we hope the faculty uses this time to gather proof-of-concept results to apply for sponsored funding and retain continuous account access. It is rather easy to allocate HPC resource expenses in the proposal budget and avail all the continuous access and support.

Users can request for Level-2 based on the allocated sponsored funds for ViCAR computing cost, technical support and data storage. Level-2 users can access up to 400 cores in the CRAY HPC machine and several mid-range servers with 40 cores. Also, the GPU clusters with 40K CUDA cores and 1.8 PetaByte data storage. They have unlimited access to ViCAR Run time and no-force-time in the Job Queues. ViCAR will also provide technical training and support for developing your high-performance computing and scalability studies using the ViCAR resources. The Faculty can submit the budget line item for “ViCAR computing cost, technical support and dedicated data storage for the tenure of the project” for an amount of $ 20K per year. If necessitated by a limited budget for e.g. $10K, will earn you only 20,000 core-hours . In case of huge demand, the resources may be capped at the cost of 50 cents per core hour.

3. Project Reporting Policy:

The ViCAR user must submit a quarterly progress report of their utilization and performance of the Center’s computing and storage resources. The quarterly reports are essential as ViCAR must meticulously track the use of the center’s resources. In keeping with this, the ViCAR will impose the following penalties for late submission.

Timeframe 1 Month Late 3 Months Late

Penalty Job submissions will be suspended. Login privileges to the ViCAR resources will be suspended

4. Special Requests and Policy Exemptions:

To request exemption to certain system policies, contact vicaradmin@ncat.edu with an overview of the exemption you need. Example requests include:

● Relaxed queue limits for one or more jobs (longer walltime, higher priority)

● System reservation (a dedicated set of nodes at a specific date/time)

● Increased disk quota

5. User Accountability:

Users are accountable for their actions and may be held accountable to applicable administrative or legal sanctions.

6. Authentication and Authorization:

All users are required to change the initial password. Accounts on the ViCAR machines are for the exclusive use of the individual user named in the account application. Users should not share accounts with anyone. If evidence is found that more than one person is using an account, that account will be disabled immediately. Users are prohibited from changing or circumventing access controls to allow themselves or others to perform actions outside their authorized privileges. Users must notify the ViCAR admin immediately when they become aware that any of the accounts used to access ViCAR resources have been compromised.

7. Data Management:

Home directories for each user are NFS-mounted on all ViCAR systems and are intended to store long-term, frequently accessed user data. User Home areas are backed up on a daily basis.

8. Software Requests:

To request software installation, please email to vicaradmin@ncat.edu.

9. Data Modification/Destruction:

Users are prohibited from taking unauthorized actions to intentionally modify or delete information or programs owned by other users.

10. Malicious Software:

Users must not intentionally introduce or use malicious software such as computer viruses, Trojan horses, or worms.

11. Denial of Service:

Users may not deliberately interfere with other users accessing system resources.

Please submit the request form for ViCAR resource allocation Click here and also send a email to vicaradmin@ncat.edu