The Hoffman2 Cluster is a project of the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) Cluster Hosting Program. It opened to users on January 28, 2008. The Hoffman2 Cluster is managed and operated by the IDRE Research Technology Group under the direction of Lisa Snyder.

UCLA’s Shared Hoffman2 Cluster currently consists of 1,300+ 64-bit nodes and over 20,000 cores, with an aggregate of over 50TB of memory. Each node has 1GB Ethernet network and a DDR, QDR, FDR, or EDR Infiniband interconnect. The cluster includes a job scheduler, compilers for C, C++, Fortran 77, 90 and 95 on the current Shared Cluster architecture, applications and software libraries that offer languages, compilers and software specific to Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Mathematics, Visualization, Programming and an array of miscellaneous software. The current peak CPU performance of the cluster is approximately 150 Trillion Floating Point, double precision, operations per second (TFLOPS) plus another 200 TFLOPS with GPUs. Hoffman2 is currently the largest and most powerful shared cluster in the University of California system.

Additional Hoffman2 resources for researchers include complete system administration for contributed cores, cluster access through dual, redundant 100Gb network interconnects to the campus backbone, the capability to run large parallel jobs that can take advantage of the cluster’s InfiniBand interconnect, and access to a Panasas parallel filesystem and a NetApp storage system. Current HPC storage capacity is 2 petabytes.

IMPORTANT UPDATE – SPRING 2023

  • As of March 2023, in order to complete the Hoffman2 Cluster new user registration, you will no longer need to be connected to the campus VPN.

New User Registration 

STEP 1 – You will need a UCLA Logon ID to reach our web-based, account management application, the System Identity Manager (SIM) to request and manage their Hoffman2 Cluster account.  A campus identity (UCLA Logon ID) is required to access many UCLA web applications, not just SIM.

If you don’t have a UCLA Logon ID, please visit the UCLA Identity and Accounts Manager, where you can create your UCLA Logon ID by following instructions on their website.

STEP 2 – After you have a UCLA Logon ID, connect to SIM – https://sim.idre.ucla.edu – and request a cluster account.  When asked to select a sponsor in SIM, please choose, “Collaboratory Workshops.”

STEP 3 – After you cluster account has been approved, you will need to return to SIM to set your cluster account password.

For more information on the Hoffman2 Cluster, please visit their website at http://www.hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu.  If you have any other questions or concerns related to the Hoffman2 Cluster, please open a support ticket via their online help desk – https://support.idre.ucla.edu/helpdesk.

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