Intuitive graphical access to HPC

Intuitive graphical access to HPC

Motivation

High-Performance Computing (HPC) plays a pivotal role in numerous scientific and engineering domains. From analyzing vast datasets to executing intricate simulations and visualizing complex models, HPC clusters are essential. Traditionally, HPC resources are accessed by connecting to a login node using SSH and then using a job scheduler such as Slurm to schedule a job on the compute cluster. For someone with extensive Linux knowledge, this way of working is relatively straightforward. However – a large proportion of those who can benefit from HPC do not have the necessary Linux fundamentals in place. This means that HPC becomes more approachable and usable in more science disciplines, resulting in a wider range of datasets and even more brilliant minds making use of them.

Graphical user interface on a HPC login node

The ability to run responsive graphical workloads on your HPC cluster empowers both novice and seasoned users.

Complementing SSH with ThinLinc on the login nodes solves many of the accessibility issues associated with HPC. By giving the users a remote desktop environment instead of a bash shell, users can interact with the HPC system without command line experience and run compute-heavy visual tools with high graphical fidelity and performance. Besides making life easier for inexperienced Linux users, ThinLinc in HPC also opens up for an entirely new paradigm of working with scientific computations. With ThinLinc, login nodes can not only serve as the entry point for scheduling jobs, but also as a workspace for scientific computing containing all necessary programs and tooling for both developing and scheduling scientific workloads interactively. This eliminates both the need to transfer data back and forth between your workstation and the HPC cluster and the need to configure an HPC-like runtime environment on your workstation.

Regardless if you choose to use ThinLinc as a workspace for everything scientific or just as a graphical and more user-friendly alternative to SSH on the login nodes, ThinLinc will drastically improve the usability and accessibility of your HPC resources.

End-user benefits

ThinLinc powered remote desktop login nodes alongside your SSH login nodes will drastically improve the user experience for a large portion of the people using your HPC cluster.

  • Visualize large datasets without time-consuming downloads or the subpar performance of X11 forwarding.

    This makes it simple to use applications such as ParaView and VisIt for engineering and scientific visualizations; Chimera, PyMOL, GROMACS, Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) and Amsterdam Modeling Suite (AMS) for computational chemistry and biology; and MATLAB and GNU Octave for mathematical and technological computations.

  • Easily handle jobs running for days or even weeks without the learning curve of tools like screen or tmux.
  • Supports in-session accelerated graphics for demanding 3D workloads.

Sysadmin benefits

ThinLinc also brings several benefits to the heroes keeping the world’s HPC clusters operational day in and day out.

  • Less time spent on support tickets and onboarding new users.
  • ThinLinc uses SSH as its secure transport protocol, meaning it will fit right in next to your current login nodes without additional security considerations.
  • Cendio is a Linux-focused company by heart and puts great effort into providing software that strongly adheres to the design language of the rest of your Linux system. We strongly believe in the principle of least surprise. In short, getting ThinLinc into production will be a breeze.
  • World-class onboarding and support with specialists in the HPC domain – we will make sure you succeed!

Organizational benefits

There are also many benefits to running ThinLinc on your HPC cluster for the organization hosting the HPC cluster.

  • ThinLinc makes HPC clusters accessible to a wider audience, simplifying securing of funding.
  • As more science disciplines get access to HPC resources, even more datasets are created, strengthening both new and existing HPC projects.

Do you believe ThinLinc has a place in your organization? Do not hesitate to get in touch. We are always happy to give advice and answer any questions you may have:

Experience the power of ThinLinc in HPC

Curious about how ThinLinc performs in an HPC environment? We offer personalized demo environments tailored for the HPC sector. Whether you would like a firsthand experience on our cluster located in Sweden or prefer an external cloud provider setup, we have you covered. It’s not just about watching; it’s about experiencing the capabilities of ThinLinc in a high-performance computing setting.

Partnerships

ThinLinc has partnered with the authors of Amsterdam Modeling Suite (AMS), SCM. This gives them the means to provide a cloud-based demonstration environment for AMS for prospective customers.

If you’re a Linux application provider looking to elevate the remote graphical access experience for your users, let’s join forces.

Resources

Who uses ThinLinc in this context?

Purdue University Secure Interactive Environments for SensiTive data Analytics Technical University of Denmark University of Strathclyde UFCSPA – Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre National Laboratory for High Performance Computing – Chile Uppsala University Leidos Indiana University National Institutes of Health Lund University Linköping University

ThinLinc HPC Webinar Series

Dive deep into the world of High-Performance Computing with our exclusive webinar series on ThinLinc and HPC. Uncover cutting-edge insights, best practices, and groundbreaking developments that are shaping the future of remote graphical access. Don’t miss out – click now to join the conversation!

 

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