Research Computing Solutions
(Updated May 8, 2026)
The research computing environment is made up of programs offering resources for free or with an application, purpose built solutions hosted by the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA), or enterprise cloud services that partner with the university. This article is meant to show you some of the supported options available to enable your work and some of the considerations to make when choosing!
- Computing Resources (At-a-Glance)
- Making an Informed Decision
- Grant and Proposal Support
- Training Resources
Computing Resources (At-a-Glance)
Subsidized Cyber-Infrastructure Programs
| Program | Description | Services |
|---|---|---|
| Illinois Computes |
Illinois Computes provides a base line of computation (and storage) services at no cost to researchers in the University of Illinois system. Get started with Illinois Computes | High performance GPU and CPU computation, Jupyter Notebooks, dedicated AI/ML hardware, Virtual Machines, High-throughput computation, sensitive data computation. More details available on their webpage! Illinois Computes: What’s Available |
| ACCESS | ACCESS is a national level program providing tiered computation (and storage) services hosted at several institutions. Allocations are provided at no cost to those with an approved application. Get started with ACCESS |
High performance GPU and CPU computation, dedicated AI/ML hardware, Large Memory Nodes, and many more please visit their resource listing. ACCESS: Resources - (Such as NCSA's Delta and DeltaAI.) |
| NAIRR Pilot | Nair is an NSF funded program designed to provide AI resources to researchers and instructors. The program provides training and hardware resources to advance research. Allocations are provided at no cost to those with an approved application. Get started with the NAIRR Pilot |
High performance GPU and CPU computation, Pre-trained models, Educational Resources (e.g. computation notebooks), Research Partnerships. NAIRR Pilot: Resource Catalog |
On-Premise Computation (1)
| Service | Description | User Guide (Hardware, Software, Cost) |
|---|---|---|
| Illinois Campus Cluster Program (2) | The Illinois Campus Cluster Program provides access to computing and data storage resources and frees you from the hassle of administering your own compute cluster. The Grainger College of Engineering offers dedicated nodes at no cost to instructors and researchers in the college.(2) | Illinois Campus Cluster User Documentation |
| Illinois Campus Cluster HTC Service | The Illinois Campus Cluster program has introduced a High-Throughput Computing (HTC) service, powered by the open-source workload manager HTCondor. | Illinois HTC User Documentation |
| DeltaAI | DeltaAI is a resource that targets the computational needs of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) workloads. | DeltaAI User Documentation |
| Radiant | Radiant is a private cloud computing service an on-campus flexible, elastic, and scalable computing solution. Leveraging cloud-like virtualization, Radiant allows researchers to create virtual machines (VMs) ranging from very small to very large. | Radiant User Documentation |
(1) The Illinois Computes program provides a base level of these resources at no cost to researchers in the Illinois University system.
(2) The Grainger College of Engineering (GCoE) has an investment into the Illinois Campus Cluster Program (ICCP); this resource is available to faculty, staff, and students in the GCoE at no cost for both research and instructional purposes.
10 InfiniBand interconnected compute nodes providing 832 CPU cores and 46 A10 GPU
- 5 GPU nodes, 1x AMD EPYC 7763 (64-core), 320 cores total, 2560GB RAM (512GB ea.), 40x A10 GPUs (8 ea.)
- 3 CPU nodes, 2x AMD EPYC 7713 (64-core), 384 cores total, 3TB RAM (1TB ea)*
- 2 GPU nodes, 2x Intel Xeon 8358 (32-core), 128 cores total, 512GB RAM (256GB ea), 6x A10 GPUs (3ea.)*
Research Queue access (select: ENG-RESEARCH-GPU)
Instructional Queue access (select: ENG-INSTRUCTION)
Cloud Computation
| Service | Description | University Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | AWS provides a broad suite of services, some of them at no cost or initially no cost. Additionally, AWS has sensitive information compliant solutions. Getting Started with AWS | AWS @ University of Illinois Unified Knowledgebase |
| AZURE | Azure also provides a large suite of services, including hosting our CUI compliant Virtual Desktop environment. Azure, How to Request a Subscription | AZURE @ University of Illinois Unified Knowledgebase |
If none of the computing resources listed above meet your needs, Engineering IT is available to help create and support a solution tailored to your project’s computing requirements. Please contact us to inquire about additional solutions at the following link: Request a Technology Consultation
Making an Informed Decision
In an already complex research computing environment there are some considerations to make when selecting a computational resource.
- Are you working with sensitive information, whether it be the input or output data, or the code that you are running?
- How large are your data sets, what form do they take, and where are they coming from?
- What is the scale of parallelization of your simulation, and what parallel technology is required (eg. OpenMP, MPI, etc)?
- Can your job be ran via batch processing, does it require real-time interaction, or does it require a graphic user interface?
- Do you have funding secured, if so, how much and for how long?
If you have any questions or would like to schedule a consultation with our Research Technology Facilitator and/or Computational Analysts please contact us at the following link: Request a Technology Consultation
Grant and Proposal Support
In order to cite the Illinois Campus Cluster Program in your work, or to prepare a budget for your grant proposal, please take advantage of the prepared documentation and sample budget template information here: Grant & Proposal Support – Illinois Campus Cluster Program
Training Resources
- NCSA has a self-paced course for getting started with the Illinois Campus Cluster.
- Learn @ NCSA has other general instructional material ranging from intermediate to advanced.
- LinkedIn Learning is free to University of Illinois users, sign in here.
- HPC Carpentry has occasional workshops for different levels of users.