User Guides

The Center for Advanced Research Computing’s (CARC) user guides are designed to provide comprehensive, step-by-step instructions for a variety of scientific computing tasks. For more personalized support, please see our User Support page.

0.0.1 Quick Start Guides

A collection of our most frequently accessed user guides and information on how to get started with our computing systems. Think of this as a crash-course in everything CARC.

0.0.2 Project and Allocation Management

Information on CARC projects and resource allocations, including managing users, creating and modifying projects, and annual project reviews.

0.0.3 HPC Systems

Learn about CARC’s shared free-to-use, high-performance computing cluster, Discovery, and the Endeavour cluster, which comprises the condo resources offered at CARC that users lease or subscribe to. Here you will find information about these resources and how to use them.

0.0.4 CARC OnDemand

Learn how to use CARC’s OnDemand service, which provides users graphical, browser-based access to the Discovery and Endeavour clusters.

0.0.5 Research Data Management

All the information you need on our file system structures and managing and transferring your data.

0.0.6 Advanced HPC Programming

Detailed information on commonly used programming languages in HPC, GPU programming, and parallel programming.

0.0.7 Life Sciences Computing

Information on the bio-resources available and USC’s cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EM), which are housed at the Core Center for Excellence in Nano Imaging (CNI).

0.0.8 Data Science

Learn how to build a conda environment, use CARC OnDemand for data science, and about popular data science packages.

0.0.9 Research Applications

Overviews of useful applications for computational biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and more.

0.0.10 Cloud Computing

General information on cloud computing and whether it is appropriate for your work. You can also find a step-by-step guide for setting up and AWS account here.

0.0.11 Secure Computing

Coming soon! Read about our upcoming secure computing enclave here.

All CARC documentation material is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution license. For more information, see our Distribution License page.