Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE)

The Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) is a cooperative of faculty and technologists working to advance the existing body of computing knowledge and expertise at UCLA. An interdisciplinary research institute with an emphasis on the integration of high performance computing, applied algorithmic research and development, computer science, and informatics, IDRE is central to UCLA’s data science initiatives. 

The IDRE mission is to lead a campus-wide effort on innovative research and education on the use and development of advanced cyberinfrastructure methods, tools, and services. This involves bringing together researchers working in domain, computational, data, and information sciences, and digital scholarship and creative activities. IDRE’s vision is to sustain UCLA as a world leader in the innovative use, application, and development of computational, data, and information sciences, and digital technologies that drive cultural and societal change. IDRE supports research and innovative scholarship that takes advantage of new technologies and encourages collaboration between faculty from different departments and disciplines at UCLA, the opening of new research questions, and the enrichment of the learning environment. The goal of this campus-wide collective is to make UCLA a world leader in high-performance computing and visualization research and education. 

IDRE programs are focused on the challenges and opportunities associated with four areas critical to advancing innovative research and scholarship: Computational Science, Data Science, Information Science, and Digital Scholarship and Creative Activities. Through the IDRE Research Technology Group (RTG), IDRE provides services and support aligned with the four program areas. IDRE’s unique computational capability includes High Performance Computing resources and expertise, Grid and Cloud Access Services, Cluster Services, the Grid Portal, and UCLA’s data center system.

For more information, please visit the IDRE site.

High-Performance Computing
The volume of data generated by healthcare systems, research, and clinical trials is growing at an exponential rate, far outpacing the computing power needed to process it. High-performance computing (HPC) is a powerful solution that enables the analysis of massive datasets and the execution of complex calculations at incredibly high speeds. With HPC, hundreds or thousands of nodes (individual computers) working together in clusters (teams) can solve problems much faster than a large single, powerful computer could on its own. Clusters of interconnected computers can each work on a small piece of a problem simultaneously to solve a very large problem – no matter how complex. 

UCLA has a longstanding commitment to enabling high-performance computing (HPC) for the campus. For general (non-PHI) usage, the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) supports scientific computing, providing expertise in multicore/GPU programming; code optimization for using HPC resources and code clinics; scaling and analysis of parallel code; optimization of serial codes; efficient serial and/or parallel algorithms use; parallelization or porting on different platforms; debugging; profiling; scientific visualization with large datasets; and grid computing. IDRE’s staff provides domain-specific support to facilitate computational and data-specific requirements to ensure smooth integration with existing campus resources. IDRE is responsible for maintaining the campus research cyber-infrastructure, including the shared Hoffman2 Cluster, consisting of 1,347 nodes (22,804 64-bit cores, 50TB RAM) with an Ethernet network and Infiniband interconnect, capable of 150 TFLOPS (>200 with GPUs). Hoffman2 is the largest and most powerful cluster in the UC system. The cluster is also an endpoint on the Globus Online service using a 10Gb network interconnected backbone, thus providing researchers a facility for fast and reliable data movement between Hoffman2 and most leadership-class facilities across the United States. Notably, Drs. Douglas Bell and Alex Bui serve on IDRE’s Executive Committee, ensuring close linkage between the campus and CTSI. For sensitive (PHI) data requiring restricted access, UCLA Health has set up an HPC equivalent framework in the Microsoft Azure cloud through the Hoffman2 and Dawson 2 computing clusters.

For more information, please visit the High Performance Computing webpage.

Hoffman2 Computing Cluster
Hoffman2 Computing Cluster is a project of the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) Cluster Hosting Program and is managed and operated by the Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC)’s high-performance computing (HPC) Research Technology Group. The Hoffman2 Cluster is UCLA’s centralized high-performance computing resource. HPC may be a solution for you a researcher’s data and compute needs exceed what they can accomplish on a personal computer. The Hoffman2 Cluster helps keep the UCLA community at the forefront of scientific discovery and creative endeavors by providing access to an advanced computational resource along with user support and training to facilitate its use.   

UCLA’s Office of Advance Computing (OARC) and the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) jointly launched the Hoffman2 Cluster in 2008. In the intervening years, it has grown to over 25,000 cores across 800+ high-performance compute nodes with an aggregate of over 174TB of memory and 8PB of high-performance network storage. The cluster includes both a general campus-use section that is freely available to all interested researchers, and a condo-style section where researchers with significant computing needs can purchase and contribute nodes for their own priority use.  

The Office of Advanced Research Computing’s (OARC) High Performance Computing experts manage and maintain the Hoffman2 Cluster. The IDRE Board provides guidance on the Hoffman2 Cluster operations and direction, and advocates to the campus for necessary research infrastructure enhancements and expansions. IDRE is jointly sponsored by OARC and by the UCLA’s Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA).  

The Hoffman2 Cluster is a Linux compute cluster currently consisting of 800+ 64-bit nodes and over 26,000 cores, with an aggregate of over 179TB of memory. Each node has 1GB Ethernet network and a DDR, QDR, FDR, or EDR Infiniband interconnect. Several nodes have one or more GPU cards with computing capability ranging from 4 to 9.  

Batch jobs and interactive sessions on the compute nodes are dispatched via a job scheduler. The Hoffman2 Cluster has a variety of software already installed and routinely updated, which includes compilers for C, C++, Fortran 77, 90 and 95, software libraries, programming languages and many applications (including several licensed software) specific to various fields and various visualization, rendering and an array of miscellaneous software. License manager software services are also available for groups who have purchased licensed software. Software installation support is likewise provided.  

The Hoffman2 Cluster is open, free of charge, to the entire UCLA campus with a base amount of computational and storage resources. Researchers can purchase additional computational and storage resources to increase their computational capacity. Computational resources owned by research groups can be accessed in preferential mode (in which each group only accesses their resources with higher priority and for extended run times) or in a shared/condominium mode (in which unused resources from a group are accessed by any other group who has purchased computational resources into the cluster for up to 24 hour run times). The advantage of the shared model is that researchers can access a much wider set of resources than what they have contributed. Additional resources for researchers include complete system administration for contributed cores, cluster access through dual, redundant 100GB network interconnects to the campus backbone, the capability to run large parallel jobs that can take advantage of the cluster’s InfiniBand interconnect, and access to a multi-node NetApp and VAST storage systems. Current HPC storage capacity is six petabytes of NetApp storage and two petabytes of flash-based VAST storage for home, project and scratch directories.  

The cluster is also an end point on the Globus Online service using the 100GB network interconnect backbone, thus providing researchers a facility for fast and reliable data movement between Hoffman2 and most leadership class facilities across the USA. 

For more information, please see the Hoffman2 system overview.

Last updated
January 23, 2025