Prices for using PDC resources

Business research

If your company uses (or wants to start using) high-performance computing (HPC) for research or development, PDC can help. PDC provides these HPC services at cost to support business/industrial research and development (R&D):

• one of Sweden’s fastest supercomputing systems (called Dardel ), which has a large CPU partition and also a highly power-efficient GPU partition that uses the smallest amount of power to perform a given number of calculations out of all of the HPC systems in Sweden and was fifth in the world in the GREEN-500 list just after it was installed in 2023 ( November 2023 GREEN-500 list ),
• an extensive range of software packages for research and engineering (and more can be installed, if needed),
• data storage facilities, and
• assistance from application experts/research software engineers, including advice on using Dardel efficiently, adapting code or preparing applications to use HPC services.

PDC has been collaborating with a wide range of companies  doing different types of research using HPC for nearly two decades. Businesses are welcome to contact PDC at business-unit@pdc.kth.se  to discuss how PDC can help your company achieve its R&D goals using HPC.

How does pricing for HPC services through PDC work for businesses?

• Prices reflect the actual cost of services. (PDC does not make a profit as it is part of a governmental agency.) The prices take into account both fixed costs (such as hardware) and estimates of variable costs (like power, cooling and maintenance of the system) over several years.
• You pay only for what you use, except for storage where (for obvious reasons) the price is for the amount of storage that your company requests.
• There are no hidden costs (unlike many cloud providers).
• Software is mainly free unless a commercial licence is needed, in which case PDC can help to you to use the license servers at your company and get the software your company needs set up on our system.

Examples of prices for businesses using PDC’s HPC services

Using computational resources

Charges for using Dardel's CPU or GPU partitions are based on the actual number of CPU cores or GPUs that are used or reserved for the job, not on the number allocated to your project. For example, this means your company may request a larger allocation of core hours for a big project, but, if the project only uses part of that allocation, that is all you will be charged for. (Please read the section about price differences when using dedicated versus shared nodes.)

• Prices for calculations on Dardel’s CPU partition:
  0.25 SEK per core hour
• Prices for calculations on Dardel’s GPU partition:
  17.50 SEK per GPU device hour, which is 140 SEK per GPU node hour
  Note: The Dardel GPU nodes each have four GPU chips and each GPU chip has two GPU devices, so each GPU node has a total of eight GPU devices. For more information about the (sometimes confusing!) terminology for the parts of GPUs, see the last sections of the Introduction to supercomputers  page.

In addition to covering the cost of using PDC's supercomputing resources, these prices also include basic support provided by PDC's support team, systems staff and application experts - just contact PDC Support through the PDC Support pages  and tell us what your company needs help with! If the scope of the assistance that your company requires goes beyond this basic level of support, PDC is required to charge the company for the additional support.

Note that only part of the Dardel system is available for industrial use (as most of the resource was established and funded solely for academic research). Please discuss your requirements with the PDC Business Unit ( business-unit@pdc.kth.se ) so we can check if there is sufficient capacity to meet the needs of your project.

Differences between running on dedicated or shared nodes

When running jobs, it is important to be aware of the difference between requesting that the job run on dedicated nodes or on shared nodes as this can affect the price.

• If your job specifies that it should be run on dedicated nodes/servers, then all the cores in those nodes are reserved for your job and your company is charged for using all of the cores, even if the job does NOT use all of them. This is what happens as the default if your job does not explicitly ask to run on shared nodes.
• If your job specifies that it should run on shared nodes, then any cores in the nodes that are not needed by your job are available for other jobs. This means your company is only charged for the cores that your job actually uses. However, there is a risk that jobs running on shared nodes may interfere with each other or you might not get as much memory as your application really needs, which is why this is not the default option for running jobs.

Storage on fast parallel Lustre system

• free - up to 0.5 TB of storage (without backup) is included at no additional cost for business computing projects

If more than 0.5 TB of storage without backup is needed or if any storage with backup is needed, the prices are as follows.

• (without backup) 33 SEK/month for each allocated TB
• (with backup to tape) 75 SEK/month for each allocated TB

Note: The prices for storage are charged according to the number of TB that your company requests and is allocated, rather than according to how much of the allocated storage is used in any given month. This is because the allocated amount of storage must be kept available for your company for the whole month, irrespective of whether your company uses all of it.

Tape backup of your data on external servers

• PDC can provide backup services on a tape robot for most systems that are connected to the Internet.
• The price is 250 SEK/year for each TB that your company actually stores on the tape backup.
• Double tape copy can be provided for tape backup of your data - data stored at PDC is mirrored to two other academic sites within Sweden, and the data never leaves the country.
• Tape is the most energy-efficient (CO₂-friendly) way to back up data and is also the safest way to store and archive your data.
• Companies that need faster retrieval can opt for disk copy backup - please contact business-unit@pdc.kth.se  for further information.
• PDC uses IBM Storage Protect for backup. If your company also needs backup clients, PDC can arrange that at an additional cost.

Prices for using software at PDC for business research

Most of the software packages on the PDC systems are available free of charge to all business and industry researchers who use our systems. However, some software packages are not available to companies in this manner as the licences were acquired solely for academic research purposes or for a specific user group. For some of the codes, a special agreement may need to be made with the software developers before researchers from a particular company can use the code.

If a company wants to use commercial software at PDC, the company will need to purchase the appropriate licence(s) from the software provider. PDC staff can help install the software on the PDC systems and set it up to use the licenses purchased by that particular company.

Academic research

Academic researchers can use PDC’s facilities free of charge.

To do this, you need to apply for (and be awarded) an allocation of time and/or storage. The National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) handles applications from Swedish researchers ( Apply for access to NAISS resources ).

All allocations include a basic level of free support from PDC’s support team, systems staff and application experts - just contact PDC Support through the PDC Support pages  and tell us what you need help with! If the scope of the assistance you require is beyond this basic level of support, PDC's support team can help you to organise for further support from PDC's experts or from organisations such as other NAISS partners or the EuroCC National Competence Center Sweden (ENCCS).

Prices when using software at PDC for academic research

Most of the software packages on the PDC systems are freely available to all the academic researchers who use our facilities. However, for some of the codes, a special agreement needs to be made with the software developers before specific researchers (or research groups) can use the code.

PDC can also provide researchers with access to some commercial software packages, though research groups usually need to pay the licence fees for using such software.

Free help to apply for allocations

PDC can provide free assistance to academic and business researchers to help prepare applications for time/storage allocations. Please contact PDC Support through the PDC Support pages  if you would like to discuss applying for an allocation. 

HPC advice, assistance and training from PDC

Researchers from business/industry and academia, as well as students, can learn more about using high-performance computing for research through PDC’s range of HPC workshops, courses and seminars  that are held throughout the year. Most of these training events (like the Introduction to PDC Systems course ) are free for all participants. The annual PDC Summer School: Introduction to High Performance Computing  has a range of fee categories.