Terms of Use - HPC systems of the Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC²)

General Rules

  • Higher legal regulations can exclude persons of certain citizenship or persons with membership to certain organizations to use the PC² systems.
    Citizens of countries that are subject to the export control policy of the German Federal Government may need additional authorization from the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) before they are allowed to use the HPC systems.
  • HPC systems operated by PC² are only allowed to be used for research activities that are funded by the Paderborn University or related institutes, the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” (DFG), or the state NRW / federal government departments or EU. Otherwise, a written consent from the PC² is required.
  • PC² assumes no liability for the integrity of the data of users and correctness of all computation results.

Rights and Obligations of the Project Leaders

  • If the applicant is a member of the Paderborn University, then the project administrator is able to add and remove members to the project via the IMT service portal.
  • Non-members of the Paderborn University must apply for an additional account with the PC² application form.
    • PC² sends project related information only to the e-mail addresses associated to Paderborn University. 
    • The account owner is responsible to specify a correct e-mail forwarding address.
    • The account owner is responsible for the Log-In Data and must treat this data with due care. The Log-In Data is personal to the individual user and may not be shared with or transferred to any other party or person.
  • The principal investigator is in charge
    • to comply with the conditions of use for all project members.
    • that all publications related to results obtained on a PC² system contain a reference (acknowledgement statement) to the PC².
    • to provide the final report.
  • The principal investigator and the project administrator are
    • the only accredited contact persons for all communication regarding the project. 
    • responsible for an appropriate forwarding within the project.
    • responsible to brief their project members.
  • A project administrator who is a member of Paderborn University is
    • in charge to create and manage guest accounts for project members who are not a member of Paderborn University.

Personal Data

  • Users of services of PC² agree that personal data is electronically stored and processed (Datenschutzerklärung in German).
  • In the application form for applying to HPC resource usage information with personal data is requested for the evaluation process of the proposal.
  • The resource management system of a HPC system collects data of the resource usage of a user for a proper provision of the HPC service.
  • PC² processes and uses the anonymized data of the HPC resource usage for purposes of statistics and reporting.
  • Information about accepted projects (title, abstract, principal investigator, affiliation, illustrations and figures, references to major publications) may be published on the PC² website and in reports.
  • The final report of a project will be used for reporting purposes of PC².

Process Cycle of Projects

  1. Project Establishment
    • The principal investigator of an awarded project, receives an e-mail including initial information and a form to apply for project member accounts.
    • After setting-up of the system access the project administrator receives a welcome e-mail with information about the role as the head of the project and a short introduction to the resource usage.
    • In case of a test project only a web link to a short introduction is provided.
  2. Project Adaptation
    • The principal investigator of a small, normal, or large project can apply for an increase of technical project limits (storage capacity, max. nodes, etc.).
    • Depending on the requested adjustment, the decision made by the Resource Allocation Board.
  3. Project End
    • 30 days before the end of the project the project administrator receives an e-mail notification. 
    • At the end of the project the project administrator receives an e-mail that the resource usage is locked and that all stored data and the project accounts will be deleted after the next 14 days.
    • On the day of project elimination the project administrator gets a final e-mail.
    • At most 30 days after project end the principal investigator has to provide the final report on the scientific accomplishments of the project. The report has to be submitted to pc2-support@uni-paderborn.de and can contain at most 20 pages. Please, be aware that the final report might be used for reporting purposes of PC².