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Terms of Usage

ICARUS NTUA HPC Infrastructure provides shared CPU and GPU resources for research, teaching, and academic software development at the National Technical University of Athens. Users must follow these terms and the conditions of their approved allocation.

Access and Projects

Access is organized through projects with a responsible faculty member or project lead, authorized members, an allocation, and an expiry date. NTUA users sign in with their institutional accounts. Each user must use their own account and keep their credentials private.

Faculty members, including professors, may apply through academic calls and add students and researchers to approved projects once project-management permissions are assigned. Requests for additional resources or extensions should describe the scientific purpose, resource needs, intended duration, and previous usage or results. Approval depends on the justification, technical feasibility, and available capacity.

See the User Dashboard guide to join a project or request resources.

Allocations and Fair Sharing

CPU and GPU compute time is offered through project allocations measured in core-hours. One CPU core-hour represents one allocated CPU core for one hour. GPU use is accounted for in equivalent core-hours, using the conversion specified by the ICARUS offering. Check the offering's accounting rules when estimating GPU usage; CPU cores and GPU devices are not interchangeable units.

Project members share the same allocation. Request only the resources your jobs need, monitor usage, and respect the allocation's limits and expiry date.

Follow the current Basic tier limits.

These limits do not reserve dedicated nodes or guarantee immediate execution. Submit compute jobs through Slurm; use login nodes for access, file transfers, and preparation rather than demanding computations.

Responsible Use and Security

  • Use resources for the approved academic activity and comply with applicable law, software licences, and NTUA rules.
  • Do not share accounts, bypass security or allocation limits, access other users' data without permission, or disrupt the service.
  • Cryptocurrency mining, unlawful content, and unauthorized commercial or personal-profit use are prohibited.
  • Protect your data and maintain copies of important files outside the infrastructure. Arrange data transfer before your allocation expires.
  • Report suspected security incidents promptly through Contact and Support.

The infrastructure team manages the shared systems. Project leads and users are responsible for their project membership, applications, data, and appropriate use of allocated resources. Access or jobs may be restricted or suspended to address misuse or protect the service.

Data Retention

User data is not backed up, and no storage quotas are currently enforced. Users must keep their own copies of important files and use shared storage responsibly.

Projects, user accounts, and their data remain for a retention period after the project ends. The duration has not yet been set and will be specified in these Terms of Usage. This retention period does not extend the compute allocation. Users should arrange data transfers before the retention period ends.

Research Outputs and Support

Acknowledge ICARUS in publications, theses, and presentations that use its resources. Suggested wording:

This work was supported by the ICARUS NTUA HPC Infrastructure of the National Technical University of Athens under project [project identifier].

Provide a short account of resource use and research outcomes when requested for allocation review or renewal.

For access, allocation, or infrastructure issues, submit a support ticket through the ICARUS User Dashboard. See the Privacy Policy for information on personal-data processing.