Astrocomp: a web service for the use of high performance computers in Astrophysics

Astrocomp is a joint project, developed by the INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Catania, University of Roma La Sapienza and Enea. The project has the goal of providing the scientific community of a web-based user-friendly interface which allows running parallel codes on a set of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, without any need for specific knowledge about parallel programming and Operating Systems commands. Astrocomp provides, also, computing time on a set of parallel computing systems, available to the authorized user. At present, the portal makes a few codes available, among which: FLY, a cosmological code for studying three-dimensional collisionless self-gravitating systems with periodic boundary conditions; ATD, a parallel tree-code for the simulation of the dynamics of boundary-free collisional and collisionless self-gravitating systems and MARA, a code for stellar light curves analysis. Other codes are going to be added to the portal.Comment: LaTeX with elsart.cls and harvard.sty (included). 7 pages. To be submitted to a specific journa