Campus Research Computing Options
(Updated April 1, 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 considerations to be made and some of the supported options available to enable your work!
- Making an Informed Decision
- Subsidized Services
- Cyber-infrastructure Programs
- Dedicated Grainger College of Engineering's Computational Resources
- Computing Resources (At-a-Glance)
- Grant and Proposal Support
- Training Resources
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 email ewconner@illinois.edu.
Subsidized Services
ACCESS have computation and storage services available at no cost to researchers and instructors who apply.
The NAIRR Pilot has computation designed for AI/ML available to no cost to researchers and isntructors who apply.
Illinois Computes has computation and storage services available to researchers at no cost.
Additionally, the Grainger College of Engineering has dedicated computational resources available at no cost for college members.
Cyber-Infrastructure Programs
Illinois Computes
Illinois Computes is a funded program that provides several purpose built computational and storage solutions at no cost to researchers in the University of Illinois system. The resources available through Illinois computes can be found at the following link. What’s Available – Illinois Computes
ACCESS
ACCESS is a program of federated systems from institutions across the nation. Researchers and Instructional staff are able to apply for an allocation at no cost. Learn how to get started at the following link. Get Started with ACCESS
NAIRR Pilot
Similar to ACCESS, the NAIRR pilot is a NSF funded program of federated systems that are designed specifically for AI/ML research and education. Researchers and Instructional staff are able to apply for an allocation at no cost. Learn how to get started at the following link. Get started with the NAIRR Pilot
Dedicated Grainger College of Engineering's Computational Resources
Illinois Campus Cluster Program
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 GPUs
- 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.)*
Note: the resources marked with an asterisk (*) are assigned to our dedicated queue for instructional use
Computing Resources (At-a-Glance)
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 free 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. 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 (2) | The Illinois Campus Cluster provides access to computing and data storage resources and frees you from the hassle of administering your own compute cluster. | 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) Allocations to the Grainger College of Engineering's dedicated Campus Cluster resources can be accessed through the respective forms linked below.
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. Email engrit-help@illinois.edu to get started.
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.