Cluster comparison

Overview of the clusters available to TU Delft researchers, including DAIC, DelftBlue, and DAS.

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Cluster comparison

TU Delft clusters

DAIC is one of several clusters accessible to TU Delft CS researchers (and their collaborators). The table below gives a comparison between these in terms of use case, eligible users, and other characteristics.

	DAIC	DelftBlue	DAS
Primary use cases	Research, especially in AI	Research & Education	Distributed systems research, streaming applications, edge and fog computing, in-network processing, and complex security and trust policies, Machine learning research, ...
Contributors	Certain groups within TU Delft (see Contributing departments)	All TU Delft faculties	Multiple universities & SURF
Eligible users	Faculty, PhD students, and researchers from contributing departments MSc and BSc students (if recommended by a professor) are provided limited access	All TU Delft affiliates	Faculty and PhD students who are either members of the ASCI research school or the ASCI partner universities ASTRON employees NLeSC employees Master students (if recommended by a professor) are provided limited access
Website	DAIC documentation	DelftBlue Documentation	DAS Documentation
Contact info	DAIC community	DHPC team	DAS admin
Request account	Access and accounts	Get an account	Email DAS admin with details like user's affiliation and the planned purpose of the account.
Getting started	Quickstart	Crash course
Hardware	System specifications	DHPC hardware	Head node + 16 x FAT nodes (Lenovo SR665, dual socket, 2x16 core, 128 GB memory, 1xA4000) 4 x GPU nodes (Lenovo SR665, dual socket, 2x16 core, 128 GB memory, 1xA5000)
Software stack	Software	DHPC modules	Base OS: Rocky Linux, OpenHPC, Slurm Workload Manager
Data storage	Storage	Storage	Storage: 128 TB (RAID6)
Access to TU Delft Network storage	✓	Only in login nodes	Not supported
Sharing data in collaboration	✓	✗
Has GPUs?	✓	✓	✓
Cost of use	Contribution towards hardware purchase		-

SURF clusters

SURF, the collaborative organization for IT in Dutch education and research, has installed and is currently operating the Dutch National supercomputer, Snellius, which houses 144 40GB A100 GPUs as of Q3 2021 (36 gcn nodes x 4 A100 GPUs/node = 144 A100 GPUs total) with other specs detailed in the Snellius hardware and file systems wiki.

SURF also operates other clusters like Spider for processing large structured data sets, and ODISSEI Secure Supercomputer (OSSC) for large-scale analyses of highly-sensitive data. For an overview of SURF clusters, see the SURF wiki.

TU Delft researchers in TBM and CITG already have direct and easy access to the compute power and data services of SURF, while members of other faculties need to apply for access as detailed in SURF’s guide to Apply for access to compute services.

TU Delft cloud resources

For both education and research activities, TU Delft has established the Cloud4Research program. Cloud4Research aims to facilite the use of public cloud resources, primarily Amazon AWS. At the administrative level, Cloud4Research provides AWS accounts with an initial budget. Subsequent billing can be incurred via a project code, instead of a personal credit card. At the technical level, the ICT innovation teams provides intake meetings to facilitate getting started. Please refer to the Policies and FAQ pages for more details.

Last modified May 13, 2025: update links overall (40d9675)