NOTUR

NOTUR
Name	NOTUR
Formation	2003
Type	Consortium
Headquarters	Bergen, Norway
Region served	Norway
Membership	Universities, Research Institutes
Leader title	Director

NOTUR

NOTUR is the Norwegian national infrastructure for high-performance computing, providing centralized supercomputing, storage, and support to researchers across Norway. It coordinates computational resources among major institutions including University of Bergen, University of Oslo, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and national laboratories. NOTUR enables computational projects across domains such as climate science, petroleum research, bioinformatics, and astrophysics through access to clusters, parallel file systems, and user support.

Overview

NOTUR operates as a distributed consortium linking academic and research institutions across Norway, integrating hardware from vendors used by institutions such as Cray Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and Dell EMC. The infrastructure supports workloads ranging from large-scale simulations used by groups at CICERO Center for Climate Research, NORSAR, and SINTEF to data-intensive analyses at Oslo University Hospital and Norwegian Institute of Public Health. NOTUR’s services are aligned with European research infrastructures like PRACE, EuroHPC, and collaborations with centers such as Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Jülich Research Centre.

History and Development

Established in the early 21st century, NOTUR evolved alongside initiatives like Research Council of Norway programs and national strategies influenced by international efforts such as TERAGRID and EUDAT. Early procurement rounds involved partnerships with regional computing initiatives including UNINETT Sigma2 and procurement frameworks similar to those used by European Grid Infrastructure. NOTUR’s development was shaped by collaborations with universities including University of Tromsø, BI Norwegian Business School, and Norwegian School of Economics, and by national research projects supported by agencies like Innovation Norway and funding instruments tied to the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Infrastructure and Technical Resources

The technical footprint of NOTUR encompasses multiple supercomputing clusters sited at partner institutions, with compute architectures spanning x86 multicore nodes, GPU-accelerated systems used in workflows similar to those at NVIDIA-backed centers, and high-throughput clusters. Storage solutions include parallel file systems comparable to Lustre and BeeGFS, and archival systems influenced by technologies used at European Organization for Nuclear Research and EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute. Networking is provisioned via national research and education networks such as Sikt and interconnects aligning with fabrics used by GEANT and regional nodes like NORDUnet. Software stacks include job schedulers akin to SLURM and resource managers parallel to those at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, while scientific libraries and compilers mirror environments at Intel-based and AMD-based centers.

Governance and Funding

NOTUR’s governance structure brings together institutional stakeholders comparable to consortia models at EPSRC-funded centers and board compositions found in organizations like CERN and European Space Agency. Funding sources combine national allocations from the Research Council of Norway with institutional contributions from universities and research institutes such as University of Stavanger and Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Strategic oversight involves advisory groups including representatives from industry partners like Equinor and national laboratories including Institute for Energy Technology, reflecting governance practices similar to those of European Molecular Biology Laboratory and Max Planck Society research infrastructures.

Services and User Community

NOTUR provides batch computing, interactive access, container environments comparable to Docker and Singularity, and user support services modeled after user support at PRACE and regional supercomputing centers. Training and outreach occur in collaboration with academic units at University of Bergen and University of Oslo and summer schools patterned on programs by SC Conference and HPC Carpentry. The user community spans disciplines with researchers from Meteorological Institute (Norway), Norwegian Polar Institute, Institute of Marine Research, and computational groups at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. Industry users include energy companies and biotech firms following engagement models used by TotalEnergies and Novo Nordisk in HPC partnerships.

Research Impact and Collaborations

NOTUR-enabled projects contribute to high-impact outputs in climate modeling, seismic imaging, genomics, and astrophysics, collaborating with international programs such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment modeling groups, European Space Agency missions, and consortia like H2020 projects. Collaborations extend to supercomputing centers including CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland), SNIC (Sweden), and SURFsara (Netherlands), facilitating cross-border workflows and shared services. Research using NOTUR resources has supported publications in journals and conferences comparable to Nature, Science, Journal of Computational Physics, and presentations at venues such as International Supercomputing Conference and SC Conference. The infrastructure also engages with initiatives addressing open science and FAIR data principles promoted by organizations like GO FAIR and aligns with national data stewardship policies influenced by Norwegian Directorate for ICT and Joint Services in Higher Education and Research.

Category:Supercomputer sites