Our experts and preinstalled software allow researchers to focus on science

Low-threshold support

Expert support is a key part of CSC’s activities. We provide computing resources, scientific software and user support under a single roof. We provide researchers with the tools they need to focus on the essential, i.e. the actual research.

We support researchers at higher education institutions and research institutes in all fields of science, as well as business clients in RDI. 

Our experts can help researchers to

• select the most suitable software packages and other tools
• get the most out of supercomputers, cloud services, and software
• use data management services.

Performant software saves researchers time and ensures that our resources as used efficiently, thereby also reducing the electricity consumed by the computing servers. If a software is not performing adequately, our experts can help you. While a bit of advice is often enough, at times more in-depth support is needed, for example, when implementing a complex workflow on a supercomputer.

Our experts train researchers in using the software and computing environments. We offer you self-study materials and open online courses on supercomputer use and data management. We also collaborate with our international partners in organizing discipline-specific courses that make the world’s top educational expertise available to the Finnish academia.

We also help researchers apply for access to significant computing resources subject to international competition.

Scientific software packages

Through us, you can access more than one hundred scientific software packages pre-installed on our computing servers. Academic use of the software is free of charge. Most software licenses also allow commercial use. For details on the licensing terms of each software package, please refer to our User’s Guide. We will additionally help you install, optimize and parallelize your own codes.

We also develop our own scientific software at CSC. Elmer, which is mostly developed at CSC, is a multi-physical open source code simulation software package. Elmer’s development has continued for more than two decades, and it is widely used internationally.

Designed for glacier simulations, Elmer/Ice is one of the world’s most widely used glacier modelling programs, and articles produced by its users have provided inputs for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Chipster is a user-friendly analysis software for data-intensive workflows developed at CSC. With the help of Chipster, you can use many life science software applications via graphical user interface, without the need to learn R, python or command line.