High Performance Computing

Welcome the Smithsonian Institution High Performance Computing Wiki.

This Wiki holds information for the use of HPC resources at the Smithsonian.

Central to the SI HPC resources is the Smithsonian Institution High Performance Cluster (SI/HPC), named Hydra.

• High performance computing is administered by the Data Platform and Advanced Computing Office, under the Office of Digital and Innovation.
• The Hydra cluster is co-located with OCIO's equipment at the Ashburn Data Center, VA.
• The documentation is organized as follows:
  
  • Overview;
    • Requesting an Account on Hydra;
    • Citing/Acknowledging Hydra;
  • What's New;
  • Policies;
  • Hydra Training;
  • Quick Start guide;
  • Reference pages;
  • Globus;
  • Dedicated RStudio Server;
  • Explanation of Warning EMails Sent to Users;
  • FAQs;
  • Cluster Upgrades
  • 2025 Data Center Move
• The complete documentation can be downloaded as a PDF document (250+ pages).

What's New

• Jun 18, 2026
  • SAO no longer provides local HPC support.

• If  you have any questions or encounter any problems, email:

  [email protected]	for Sys-Admin related issues,
  [email protected]	for other issues.

• Past news with more details can be found at the What's New page.

Quick Links

• Cluster Status Page at SAO
• Cluster Status Page at OCIO^*
• QSub Generator ^*

^*: these pages are only accessible from trusted machines: within SI or SAO networks, or using VPN.

 Reminder

• References to Hydra (publications, proposals, etc.) should mention the cluster as:

Smithsonian Institution High Performance Computing Cluster. Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.25572/SIHPC.

• or as an acknowledgment:

"(Some of) [Tt]he computations in this paper were conducted on the Smithsonian High Performance Cluster (SI/HPC), Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.25572/SIHPC". 

Last updated 18 Jun 2026 SGK/MPK.