Amarel

Rutgers students, researchers, and faculty utilizing Amarel

Rutgers departments, schools, centers, and institutes performing work on Amarel

Core compute hours since 2016

JUMP TO: The Amarel model Featured use cases Access to Amarel Current Hardware

About Amarel

In July 2017, the Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC) unveiled Amarel, a “condominium” style computing environment developed to serve the university’s wide-ranging research needs. The Amarel cluster provides a shared platform that optimizes resources for the benefit of all users. Named in honor of Dr. Saul Amarel, one of the founders of the Rutgers Computer Science Department and contributor to advanced computing and artificial intelligence research and methodologies, Amarel is designed to suit many different research applications.

Through Clark (end 2025; early 2026):

816 compute nodes
- 42,216 Intel Xeon cores
- 220 GPUs
- Open OnDemand and FastX servers
- InfiniBand high-performance networking

More information:

Community-contributed software repository
Spans three Rutgers data centers (Piscataway, Newark, and Camden) producing a unified compute, data, and storage system
Rolling node/phase retirement with new node replacement, beginning in spring 2021

The Amarel model

Amarel is a shared community-owned advanced computing environment available to any investigator or student with projects requiring research computing resources. The model is distinguished by a set of uniform technical and policy elements that, while sufficiently flexible to support the degree of heterogeneity inherent in the Rutgers environment, affords a level of standardization that greatly simplifies management procedures, troubleshooting, and provides a more seamless user experience.

View Amarel FAQ

Acceptable use policies [Box file]

Featured Use-Cases

Traditional High Performance Computing
High Throughput Computing (HTC)
Data Analytics
Large memory systems
Virtualization
Accelerators (GPGPUs, XEON PHIs, FPGAs)
The ability to couple with edge devices

Access to Amarel

While general access use is available to the entire Rutgers community, investigators can become condominium owners through a university-sponsored matching program. Owners have highest priority and are guaranteed access commensurate with their investment. Owner allocations are designed to feel as close to a locally maintained and managed system as possible, but with unused cycles being available to the general pool. Free access is available on a first come first served basis to the Rutgers community utilizing general pooled resources under an open access policy. Non-owner jobs can be preempted immediately by higher priority (owner) jobs.

Request access to Amarel

Become an Amarel owner

Current hardware specs

Beginning in 2023, OARC began naming each new consecutive phase after a city in New Jersey, and we are moving through the alphabet as we continue. In late 2025, we are transitioning from the current phase, Bayonne, to the next generation, Clark, which will be available to the research community soon. The new equipment will double the compute power of a single node from 256GB per node in the past several phases to 512GB per node in Clark.

Clark compute nodes include the following:

2x Intel Xeon Gold 6538Y+ (Emerald Rapids) Processors (60MB cache, 2.20 GHz), 5600 MHz TruDDR5 memory, 32-core processors (64 cores/node)
16x32GB DIMMs (512GB/node)
960GB SSD on-board drive
25GigE and Infiniband NDR (200Gb/s) adapters
The cost of node ownership is $11,435 per node
A limited number of 3x L40S GPUs are also available at $30,755

The cost of node ownership is based upon a four-year fully warrantied node lifetime. Every Amarel node sold comes with 1TB complementary storage for the same 4-year terms from allocation as the node. Amarel storage can be purchased in 1-year or 4-year terms. The Amarel storage model recently underwent pricing and policy of terms changes with the new Clark phase. Please refer to the Amarel FAQ page for further information.

NOTE: If you plan to use software on the cluster that requires special licensing, configuration, or data transfer support (e.g., something more complex than open source software you can install in your personal directory), the feasibility of installing and running that software must be evaluated by our infrastructure team. We have encountered software packages requiring remote authentication schemes, data transfer capability from compute nodes, and persistent local services like web servers that our cluster’s environment cannot support.

For more information, or to discuss your interest in becoming an Amarel owner, contact us.