The Association of the National Center for Advanced Computing (CNCA) aims to manage and implement advanced computing infrastructures, to support scientific research, knowledge transfer and development activities, human resource qualification and provision of services.

Instituto Superior Técnico, an associate entity of the CNCA, has access to discretionary resources of advanced computing for internal use, through a pilot project implemented until September 2026.

Resources include the Deucalion, Mare Nostrum 5, CIRRUS, and STRATUS platforms, among others.

The specifications are available here (PDF, 300 KB).

Supply of computational resources to associates does not cancel their right to apply to Portuguese tenders in order to access computational resources that FCT regularly makes available.

Técnico has 240,000 processing units (PU). As of right now, it makes available to Research and Development (R&D) Units 75 % of these resources (180,000 PU), upon request.

In the pilot project, requests are analysed by order of arrival. Projects must distribute their resource usage evenly throughout the year.

Who is eligible?

Faculty and researchers of the Técnico ecosystem are eligible to request resources of advanced computing.

How to make a request?

To request access, please send an email to the IT Services with the following information:

• the project to be created
• the intended percentage of quota
• the cost center to which the cost shall be allocated, or the details of the entity to which the amount is to be invoiced
• the project team, indicating the main researcher
• the starting month and the expected duration in months
• the node.hour needs in Arm CPU
• the node.hour needs in x86 CPU
• the GPU.hour needs
• the vCPU.hour needs (VM format)
• the TB.month needs (storage)
• the possible specific requirements.

R&D Units can request one or more project, which should not exceed 25% of the quota (60,000 PU). They should occupy at least 2.5% of the quote (6,000 PU), which can be increased afterwards, according to quota availability. This quota is yearly and non-transferable.

After approval, CNCA shall provide a unique project number and access credentials.

R&D Units must contribute to the yearly quota of the associate, according to what they request.