PSC Charging Policies

Purpose for Charging

PSC charges are intended to encourage efficient and productive use of the center's resources. With that in mind, the policies documented below are subject to change as necessary to accomodate efficient and productive use.

Service Units

Users are charged in terms of "Service Units", or "SUs". In general, we try to maintain the following definition of a service unit across our machines:

One Service Unit = the charge for a batch job requiring an average amount of memory and running for 1 CPU hour

The number of service units charged then closely approximates the number of CPU hours used.

Requesting a Refund

When appropriate, PSC provides refunds for jobs that failed due to circumstances beyond your control.

To request a refund, contact a PSC consultant or email remarks@psc.edu. In the case of batch jobs, we require the standard error and output files produced by the job. These contain information needed in order to refund the job.

Cray XT3 (bigben) Specifics

Specific information about charges and the Cray XT3 (bigben) are included in the bigben document. Specifically, information about the charging algorithm, how to charge usage to alternate grants and how to track charges on bigben is included.

Pople Specifics

Specific information about charges on pople are included in the pople document. Specifically, information about the charging algorithm, how to charge usage to alternate grants and how to track charges on pople is included.

Salk Specifics

Specific information about charges and salk are included in the salk document.