Eligibility and access conditions
CÉCI computing resources are intended for academic research activities conducted by members of the partner institutions. Each university of the CÉCI consortium (ULiège, UCLouvain, ULB, UNamur and UMons) is responsible for accrediting its own members for access to the CÉCI clusters.
Researchers, professors, postdoctoral researchers, phD and master students affiliated with a CÉCI partner university may request access to the infrastructure for scientific computing projects.
In practice, to request the creation of a CÉCI account, you must:
- Be officially affiliated with a university member of the CÉCI consortium
- Hold an official university email address
- Be endorsed by a supervisor holding a permanent academic or scientific position
If you do not yet have an official university email address, you must first complete the appropriate administrative procedures to obtain one.
Note that each account is personal and non-transferable. Users must not share their login credentials with any other person. Users are expected to comply with the CÉCI usage policies and with the local regulations of the hosting institutions. More information about this can be found here: What are the rules for using the CÉCI clusters?
Please refer to the section CÉCI account quick start for further details about the account creation.
Guest Access
For external collaborators, if obtaining an official university email address is too cumbersome with respect to the duration and/or nature of the collaboration, a CÉCI account holder who has a permanent position within their university may invite a guest user for a limited period of time. This procedure slightly differs from the regular account creation process.
Resources available
The European model for High-Performance Computing (HPC) categorizes computing resources into three main tiers:
- Tier-2 for resources available at research institutions or universities
- Tier-1 for national or regional centers with significant capacity
- Tier-0 for large-scale infrastructures usually acquired through partnerships among several countries
This tiering system helps organize and optimize access to supercomputing resources across Europe.
CÉCI clusters (Tier-2)
A CÉCI account provides access to the HPC clusters hosted by all partner universities. These are categorized as Tier-2 clusters, each providing between 1000 to 5000 CPU cores, with some also featuring tens of GPU accelerators. Along with compute time on these systems, you also obtain dedicated storage space on a distributed storage facility accessible from all CÉCI HPC clusters.
Detailed technical information about these resources can be found on the CÉCI clusters and Common Storage pages.
Walloon Supercomputer (Tier-1)
The Walloon Region supports a regional Tier-1 supercomputing infrastructure hosted by Cenaero. Computing time on this infrastructure is available for academic researchers from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (universities and research centers) and the private sector.
CÉCI users are eligible to request compute time on the Walloon Region Tier-1 supercomputer. Access is granted following the evaluation of a project describing the scientific objectives and computing requirements. Details about the procedure are available on the Tier-1 projects page.
LUMI supercomputer (Tier-0)
The LUMI supercomputer is one of Europe’s flagship Tier-0 HPC infrastructures operated within the EuroHPC initiative and hosted in Finland. It is a pan-European supercomputing platform designed for large-scale simulations, data analytics and artificial intelligence workloads, offering resources well beyond the scale typically available on Tier-1 and Tier-2 systems.
As Belgium is a member of the LUMI consortium, researchers affiliated with Belgian universities and public research institutions may apply for compute allocations through the Belgian national share of LUMI resources. Access is project-based and allocations are granted following scientific and technical evaluation procedures. In addition, eligible researchers may also apply through EuroHPC calls for larger European-scale projects.
More information about LUMI and how to obtain access is available on the EuroCC Belgium website. If needed, you can also contact us at ceci-logist@lists.uliege.be for guidance regarding the application procedure.