Fare Overview

This page outlines the TSUBAME usage fees.
We omit details for the sake of simplicity of explanation. Please refer to the "Charging rules of TSUBAME4.0 supercomputer" (in Japanese) on the Regulations page for more details.

Major differences from TSUBAME3.0

• The amount of resources corresponding to the TSUBAME point has been changed from "1 node second" to "1 node hour".
• The price of the TSUBAME point has been revised to reflect the difference in computing power.
• We introduced "Fixed price usage".
• In TSUBAME4, we have two different storage types: HDD and SSD. The prices for each storage are introduced.
• A separate application usage fee is required for some commercial applications.

Purchase unit of usage fees and unit price

Purchase units and prices vary depending on the user and group category.

About TSUBAME groups

TSUBAME group serves as the unit of usage and billing for TSUBAME computing services.
On-campus users can create their own groups, but the faculty member responsible for the payment must be the group administrator (= group creator).

Groups for external usage are created by CII based on the content of the usage application.

About TSUBAME points

TSUBAME points are required when using compute nodes and storage. One TSUBAME point if granted to a group per "(approximately) one node hour" in the table above.
Please note that TSUBAME points are valid until the end of the fiscal year (end of March) and cannot be carried over to the following year.

Resource types and coefficient

1 TSUBAME point is consumed when using the single entire computation node for 1 hour.
The number of required points increases proportionally as the number of nodes and execution time increases.
For resource types that use only a part of a node, the TSUBAME points consumed become cheaper depending on the amount of resources. For more details, please refer to the table in the appendix.
By paying twice or 4 times the normal TSUBAME point, jobs can be executed with higher priority.

Node reservation

You can reserve compute nodes by specifying the date, time, and number of nodes.
TSUBAME point consumption is about 1.25 to 10 times that of normal execution via job scheduler, depending on reservation timing and season).

Fixed price usage (introduced in TSUBAME4.0)

You can use compute nodes for a monthly fixed fee, up to 2 nodes per group, and a budget manager.
TSUBAE point consumption is about 10 times that of normal execution via the job scheduler.
For more details, please refer to the subscription page.

Storages

The following TSUBAME points are consumed for each Lustre filesystem usage as group storage.
 ・For HDD area, 0.5 points per 1TB/month [purchase limit: 100TB]
 ・For SSD area, 0.2 points per 100GB/month (2 points per 1TB) [purchase limit: 3TB]
In principle, you need to purchase the same amount of storage until the end of the fiscal year, but the unused portion can be reimbursed later as TSUBAME points and used for calculations.

Applications (select applications became paid for with TSUBAME4.0)

TSUBAME points are required for the selected applications for on-campus users.
Please refer to the table in the appendix for the list of applications and prices.
The prices below are for FY2024 and are very low due to the trial period, but will be revised to be reasonable from FY2025 onward.

Point purchase and payment methods

For on-campus budget

Register your budget on the TSUBAME portal, and after receiving approval from CII, associate it with a TSUBAME group and perform point purchase operations by yourself. For more details, please refer to the TSUBAME Portal User's Guide.
Payment is made by budget transfer. Please refer to the Charge Schedule (Tokyo Tech Users) for the transfer timing.

Payment by external budget

The payment process is done outside of the TSUBAME portal.
You will receive an invoice for payment.

Appendix

Pricing factor for resource type

Application Pricing (for FY2025)

Outside TSUBAME usage(Commercial Application Distribution) is limited to certain users and campuses depending on applications.
Note that the price in FY2025 differs from that of FY2024. We are also planning to change (increase) the prices for FY2026.