Advanced Research Computing
The Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team operates Oxford’s central high-performance computing and high-throughput service for non-sensitive data, providing researchers with access to powerful shared computing infrastructure and expert support. The ARC team enables researchers across all disciplines to carry out computationally intensive work at a scale and speed that cannot be achieved on personal computers.
As one part of Oxford’s broader Research Computing ecosystem, the team supporting research ranging from large-scale modelling and simulation to data-intensive analysis and AI workloads, and helping researchers turn complex ideas into impactful results.
What is provided?
The ARC team provides a professionally managed research computing environment designed to support demanding research workloads. ARC is intended for research that does not involve sensitive data and requires substantial compute power, parallel processing, or accelerated hardware, and is used by researchers across the University for both exploratory and production-level work.
The team provides the high-performance computing (HPC) and high-throughput computing (HTC) services for research at Oxford.
HPC service - providing access to powerful CPU clusters, with fast storage and interconnect ideal for parallelised computing across multiple nodes.
HTC service - offers access to large-scale CPU and GPU nodes, for serial computing that requires accelerated hardware.
Information about the ARC systems behind these services can be found here.
What can you do?
We supports a wide range of computational research activities, including:
- Large-scale modelling and simulation across scientific and engineering disciplines
- Data-intensive analysis and high-throughput computing workloads
- AI and machine learning training and inference using GPU-accelerated systems
- Running specialist research software and custom research code
- Scaling up analyses that are impractical or too slow on local machines
Who can use ARC’s services
ARC is available to:
University of Oxford staff and researchers
- Postgraduate research students
- Approved collaborators working on Oxford-led research projects
Access to ARC typically requires an active University account and membership of a project or research group.
Getting started with ARC
Researchers need to be part of a project to access ARC. If you are a new user who would like to be added to an existing project, you can request a new user account using [this form; link TBC].
If there is not currently a suitable project for your work, you can request a new project using [this form; link TBC] (requester must be a member of staff).
More information about accessing ARC and managing projects can be found on the OxIntranet. Documentation on how to start using ARC is available in the ARC user guide.
Support and training
ARC is supported by a dedicated team providing:
- User support for accessing and using the service
- Documentation and best-practice guidance
- Training courses and workshops for new and existing users
- Advice on optimising workloads for high-performance computing environments
Support is designed to help researchers use ARC effectively and efficiently, from first login through to large-scale production runs.
For information about training courses and workshops covering ARC’s services, please see the OxIntranet.
More information
More information about ARC services, including setting up new projects, policies, and accounting details, can be found on the OxIntranet (SSO required). If you are external to the University and unable to access these pages, please contact [email protected] for further information.