Sustainability

Sustainability of the ALICE HPC Cluster

The ALICE High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster at Leiden University is designed with sustainability at its core, offering a greener alternative to individual high-powered workstations. By centralizing compute resources, ALICE reduces the need for energy-intensive personal systems, promoting shared efficiency.

Energy efficiency played a key role in the most recent procurement process, where performance-per-watt was a decisive factor in evaluating tenders. ALICE also maximizes resource usage through the SLURM workload manager, which minimizes idle compute cycles. Users can see efficiency metrics (via seff) at the end of each job, encouraging optimized usage.

Collaboration is further enhanced through shared project folders and a common software stack, reducing duplication and enabling data reuse. New users are supported through introductory courses and a comprehensive wiki, empowering them to use computing resources more effectively across the board.

Importantly, ALICE contributes to campus sustainability by repurposing its waste heat to warm the Snellius building, as part of a broader initiative with Equans to reduce the university’s carbon footprint ( https://equans.nl/nieuws/equans-verduurzaamt-datacenter-universiteit-leiden/ ).

Together, these measures make ALICE not only a powerful research tool but also a model for sustainable computing.