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The accounting on the HPCF is currently based on the total elapsed time for which cores are used. With that, the HPCF unit of account, the System Billing Unit, or SBU, for both serial and parallel jobs is defined as follows.the cores allocated to serial or parallel batch jobs. To reflect the current system configuration and performance the formula to compute SBU changed on 1 January 2024 to

Panel

SBU = P * N * T

where:

P = 424074479 / (8090 * 128 * 86400)

is a fixed proportionality factor, adjusted so that the entire Atos system will deliver 424,074,479 SBU per day on a "typical"
ECMWF job mix on the HPC system (8090 * 128 is the total number of physical cores used to run batch jobs and 86400
the number of seconds in a day).

N

Is the number of (physical) cores allocated to a job. 

T

is the elapsed time (real time in seconds) recorded for a job.

Examples:

  1. A serial job using 1 hour (3600 seconds) of elapsed time will be charged about 17.06 SBU.
  2. A parallel job requesting 2 nodes, running for 3 hours elapsed time will be charged 13104.90 SBU.

Compared to 2023 the SBU cost of the same job in 2024 is ~10.8% less . 

Expand
titleSBU formula in 2023


Panel

SBU = P * N * T

where:

P = 470410408 / (8098 * 128 * 86400)

is a fixed proportionality factor, adjusted so that the entire Atos system will deliver 470,410,408 SBU per day on a "typical"
ECMWF job mix on the HPC system (8098 * 128 is the total number of physical cores used to run batch jobs and 86400
the number of seconds in a day).

N

Is the number of (physical) cores allocated to a job. 

T

is the elapsed time (real time in seconds) recorded for a job.

Examples:

  1. A serial job using 1 hour (3600 seconds) of elapsed time will be charged about 18.91 SBU.
  2. A parallel job requesting 2 nodes, running for 3 hours elapsed time will be charged 14522.43 SBU.


Tip
titleEnd of job information

At the end of your jobs a short report is appended to the corresponding job output file, which amongst other useful information, includes how many SBUs where used and the account they were charged on:

No Format
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] This is the ECMWF job Epilogue
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] +++ Please report issues using the Support portal +++ 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] +++ https://support.ecmwf.int                     +++ 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] Run at 2022-08-24T09:09:01 on ac
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] JobName                   : myjob
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] JobID                     : 37015044
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] Submit                    : 2022-08-24T09:08:55
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] Start                     : 2022-08-24T09:08:55
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] End                       : 2022-08-24T09:09:01
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] QueuedTime                : 0.0 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] ElapsedRaw                : 6 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] ExitCode                  : 0:0 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] DerivedExitCode           : 0:0 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] State                     : COMPLETED
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] Account                   : myaccount
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] QOS                       : np
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] User                      : user
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] StdOut                    : /home/user/slurm-37015044.out
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] StdErr                    : /home/user/slurm-37015044.out
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] NNodes                    : 1 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] NCPUS                     : 256 
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] SBU                       : 4.083
[ECMWF-INFO -ecepilog] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Member States are allocated computing resources for their own purposes according to the Council guidelines on distribution of computer resources. Member State Computing Representatives may distribute those resources among projects registered at ECMWF as they feel appropriate. Should a redistribution of resources between the projects of a Member State be required during the course of a year, this may be carried out by the Member State Computing Representative or another designated "privileged user" (see section Administration of project accounts in the Member States  below).

Special Projects

Special Projects are experiments or investigations of a scientific or technical nature undertaken by one or more Member States, likely to be of interest to the general scientific or technical community. In the spring of each year, Directors of national meteorological services are invited to submit requests for Special Project resources to be available for use in the following year. Requests are considered by the Council at its winter session, in conjunction with recommendations from the Scientific Advisory Committee. Since Special Project accounts are separate from Member State resources, their account administration is performed by ECMWF.

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