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Specific instructions for the FiQCI partition on LUMI

The FiQCI partition of LUMI provides access to the Helmi quantum computer. Access is granted for users belonging to projects that have been granted QPU resources. In addition to running jobs on Helmi via LUMI, users can also use the general LUMI system and software stack including using simulators.

Opening Hours

Helmi is available daily 13:00-8:00 (Finnish time zone). The queue will accept new jobs continuously, but will only run them in this period. You can check the status of the connection here: https://fiqci.fi/status

LUMI Helmi projects vs. regular LUMI projects

Helmi projects are slightly different from standard LUMI projects. The main difference is, that you will need to apply for quantum resources in addition to CPU, GPU, and storage.

Pilot Phase

During the pilot phase, approved projects will get 24 hours of access to the FiQCI Partition. See the Call text for details.

The FiQCI partition q_fiqci

Access to Helmi is only available through the FiQCI partition on LUMI, which provides a direct connection between a LUMI-C node (with 128 cores and 256 GB RAM) and Helmi.

There is one queue in the Helmi partition corresponding to FiQCI projects: q_fiqci. Currently, the maximum run time of a quantum job is 15 minutes.

Name Max walltime Max jobs Max resources/job
q_fiqci 15 mins 1 1 node

Storage areas

The Helmi partition uses the same storage policies as LUMI.

Quota Max files Expandable Backup Retention
User
Home		 20 GB 100k No Yes User lifetime
Project
Persistent		 50 GB 100k Yes
500GB		 No Project lifetime
Project
Scratch		 50 TB 2000k Yes
500TB		 No 90 days
  • Your home directory ($HOME) that can contain up to 20 GB of data. It is intended to store user configuration files and personal data. The user home directory is purged once the user account expires.
  • Your project persistent storage is used to share data amongst the members of a project and is located at /project/project_<project-number>. The project persistent directory is purged once the project expires.

  • Your project scratch is intended as temporary storage for input, output or checkpoint data of your application. Please remove the files that are no longer needed by your project on a regular basis.

  • Further details on LUMI Storage

Usage and Billing

Quantum computing projects work similarly to the regular LUMI system. The main differences are:

  1. FiQCI projects use the --partition=q_fiqci partition instead of the regular LUMI-C --partition=standard and --partition=small.
  2. The maximum job walltime is 15 mins.
  3. Usage is billed as QPU seconds QPUs in q_fiqci.
  4. The LUMI-Helmi computing environment has to be loaded separately. See Running on Helmi for details.

Presently, running through the q_fiqci queue will consume QPU seconds for the amount of wall-time spent running in the q_fiqci queue.

Querying your used QPUs

You can check your used QPUs using the lumi-allocations tool.

Storage is billed by volume as well as time. The billing units are TB-hours. For the regular scratch file system, 1 TB that stays for 1 hour on the filesystem, consumes 1 TB-hour.

Helmi-specific support can be reached via the CSC Service Desk. Note that presently, user support is limited to technical issues.