Introduction

The MELIS Scientific Computing Service (SCC) of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) has updated new rates for the year 2024. These rates have been approved by the Social Council of the UPF in December 2023. This page details the rate updates, their basis and news in services.

 

Mission

The SCC's mission is to improve accessibility to high-performance computational technological resources in academic research and to maintain a conducive environment to solve the needs of researchers with technological evolution.

The fact that the service is paid, allows for a homogeneous and equitable distribution of resources between the research groups, while also allowing the service's own infrastructure to be updated and maintained.

 

Rate types

The rates are divided into two distinctive groups:

1. UPF Group: This group includes institutions belonging to the UPF Group and those located in the PRBB building:

https://www.upf.edu/es/web/universitat/grup-upf

 These entities enjoy preferential rates and receive the following advantages covered by MELIS:

  • Exemption from monthly charges when the sum of services consumed does not exceed €10.
  • 10% discount on the total billing of the services used during a month.

2. External Institutions: This group includes institutions not linked to the UPF. For the computing of this rate, the electrical costs of the service machinery are added. In case that external entities make intensive use of the service, the application of other benefits or advantages will be considered.

 

​​​Payment types

All services offer two payment options, detailed below:

  • Monthly: At the end of each month, the information about the usage of the different contracted services is collected. Depending on the monthly usage, the corresponding invoice is generated.
  • Packs: This option involves an advance payment of service units. At the end of each month, the number of units consumed of a specific service is registered and the number of units of the original contracted pack is reduced. For example, if a 250TB Computational Storage pack is contracted in January and 20TB have been used at the end of that month, this means that 230TB will be available in February. If another 20TB are consumed in February, there will be 210TB remaining in March.

Packs are beneficial when the expected use of the service is known in advance. For example, if an average use of 50TB of Computational Storage is expected for a project, using the pack (250TB) will guarantee service for the next 5 months.

The packs are valid for 2 years, and therefore their unit price is slightly lower compared to the monthly payment.

In addition to these two payment options, research groups have the opportunity to participate as investors in the service. If a research group receives an allowance of more than €30.000 to buy computing infrastructure and decides to invest it in the service so that it can be incorporated into its infrastructure, it will be provided with a balance equivalent to this allowance. This balance will have an expiry of 7 years and may be used by the research group for service-related expenses during this period.

 

Services

The services of the SCC are categorized as follows: