We are pleased to announce a significant step forward for the DHInfra.at project: a new GPU cluster has been successfully installed at the University of Graz. This is an important addition to the shared infrastructure available to the Austrian DH community and will provide much-needed computational resources for cultural heritage research.
A Collaborative Effort
The acquisition of this cluster was a careful process, beginning with extensive research into the specific hardware and software requirements of the DH community. This foundational work, guided by expert advice from initiatives like EuroCC Austria and use cases from researchers across Austria, led to a comprehensive, Europe-wide tendering process.
We express our gratitude to all stakeholders involved. Our collaboration with the selected vendor, Megware, has been excellent, resulting in a specialized cluster well-suited to the needs of DH research and workflows.
From Unpacking to Powering On
The arrival and setup of the hardware were a collaborative effort. A special thanks goes to Georg Binder from the University of Graz’s IT services for their expertise and hands-on work in getting the system unpacked, racked, and ready for action.
Technical Focus
This new cluster, located in Graz, is one of several key components of the DHInfra.at initiative. It is primarily designed to fill a specific niche for DH researchers, providing resources for medium-to-large-scale model training and inference that is not easily available on local workstations or general-purpose HPC systems. It features SOTA CPUs, modern NVIDIA H200 GPUs and a high-speed InfiniBand network.
We are currently in the final stages of network configuration. Based on previous research and testing, our goal is to implement both classic batch scheduling and interactive sessions. We will draw on the expertise of existing HPC initiatives at the University of Graz and national partners like Austrian Scientific Computing (ASC).
What to Expect Next
The cluster is currently in a closed testing phase. Access will be rolled out in stages:
- DHInfra.at partners
- CLARIAH-AT Consortium members
- The broader Austrian DH community
We anticipate the system will be available for wider access this winter. We will prioritize institutions with ACOnet access, enabling seamless registration via single sign-on (SSO).
Get Involved!
If you have a DH research project that is constrained by a lack of computational power, we would like to hear from you. Please drop us an email at dhinfra@uni-graz.at. We are keen to support and promote relevant use cases.
Keep an eye on this space for further announcements as we move closer towards an official launch.