Software Available on Nova
There is a wide assortment of application software on Nova. Essentially all software is accessible from the command line using the environment modules system. Many graphical applications can also be accessed from menus in the Nova Desktop available through Open OnDemand.
The following is a list of different types of software available along with guides to get you started.
Compilers and Build Systems - If you are building applications from source code in C/C++ or Fortran, you will need a compiler and build tools.
VS Code - This guide shows how to use the VS Code development framework together with the cluster.
Python Environments - It is very to common to build applications with Python. There are a variety of methods and framework for developing applications with Python.
Spack - Spack is package installation system. Most of the software available on the cluster is installed with Spack. This guide shows how you can use Spack to build thousands of tools software components yourself.
Bioinformatics - There is a fairly extensive list of tools available for bioinformatics and life sciences.
Statistics and Mathematics - Tools such as R, Matlab, and Mathematica are available.
Chemistry and Natural Sciences - LAMMPS, VMD, and Alphfold3 and other tools for molecular modelling are available.
Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence - The Nova cluster provides a large number of GPUs that are often used in Machine learning. This guide shows you how to use the tools available.
Engineering and Physics - There are a number of commercial applications available for solving problems in fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, and electronics.
R and RStudio
RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the R programming language, particularly focused on statistical analysis. RStudio is available in Nova OnDemand and the R language itself is available as a module in the Nova command line.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a very popular integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft that supports debugging, code completion, and version control, amongst many other features. While VS Code is particularly popular among Python developers, it includes an extension system that allows it to support numerous programming languages. VS Code is available in Nova OnDemand, or you can use a copy of VS Code installed on your local computer to connect to the Nova cluster. Please note, VS Code is not the same as Visual Studio, which is a more extensive IDE from Microsoft primarily focused on C++ and .NET development.