BBP Services

Choosing an option

Four ways to run the Broadband Platform

The Broadband Platform is free, open-source software. You can run it yourself at no cost. This page lays out the four ways to get at it, including ours, and where each one stops making sense.

Every option below runs the same scientific code, published by SCEC under a BSD 3-Clause licence. What differs is who compiles it, who stores the Green's functions, who supplies the compute, and who is on the hook when a run fails at three in the morning. Nobody is selling you the physics.

1

Free · self-hosted

Build it from source

Clone SCECcode/bbp and compile it on a Linux machine. This is the reference path, and the one SCEC develops on. Everything else on this page is a wrapper around it.

Best for: researchers modifying the science, adding a method or a region, running large batches on their own cluster, or needing every velocity model installed at once.

Advantages

  • Free, and yours. No metering, no quota, no third party in the loop
  • All seven simulation methods and every region you choose to install
  • The code is modifiable, which is the point if your research is the method
  • Runs at whatever scale your own hardware allows

What it costs you

  • Linux only, and a real Fortran toolchain. The source needs gfortran 10 or newer, though the documentation still says 8.3
  • Green's functions run 14–27 GB per region, downloaded and stored by you
  • Acceptance tests reproduce SCEC's reference results only on native x86_64; on Apple Silicon the build is deterministic but does not match
  • You own the compute, the queue, the failures and the upgrades
2

Free · runs on a laptop

Run the SCEC Docker image

SCEC publishes a containerised build at sceccode/bbp_docker that runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. It ships with the LA Basin velocity model and three validation events for that region, so it works the moment it finishes pulling.

Best for: learning the platform, teaching it, reproducing a published LA Basin result, or deciding whether BBP suits your problem before committing to anything.

Advantages

  • No compiler, no toolchain, no dependency hunt
  • Free, and runs on the machine you already have
  • Works offline once pulled, which suits a classroom
  • Same code, so results are comparable with any other option

What it costs you

  • One region. LA Basin and three validation events. Anything outside that means installing Green's functions yourself
  • Laptop-speed. A multi-realization ensemble is measured in hours or days
  • On Apple Silicon it runs under emulation, which is slow and does not reproduce SCEC's reference numbers
  • No queue, no scheduling, no automation. One run at a time, by hand
3

Free to eligible researchers · HPC

Quakeworx science gateway

Quakeworx is an NSF-funded science gateway that runs the Broadband Platform on the SDSC Expanse cluster from a browser. Pick validation or scenario mode, choose an event and a method, or upload your own source description and station list.

Best for: academic researchers with institutional credentials who want supercomputer-scale runs without buying compute, and who are working on a research timescale.

Advantages

  • No cost to eligible researchers, and no infrastructure to run
  • Real HPC behind it, so large runs are practical
  • Nothing to install, and the velocity models are already there
  • Sits alongside other earthquake science tools on the same gateway

What it costs you

  • Institutional single sign-on. Practically, this means an academic affiliation
  • Interactive by design. It is a gateway for people, not an endpoint for software
  • Shared HPC queues, so time-to-result depends on what else is running
  • Research use. It is not positioned as, or supported as, production infrastructure
4

Paid · metered API

BBP Services

This service. The platform is hosted and metered behind a REST API: post a job spec, get back seismograms, response spectra and the rupture description, priced before you submit. No affiliation required, and no relationship with SCEC needed to use it.

Best for: software that needs simulations on demand, consultants and companies without an academic affiliation, and anyone who wants simulation to be a call in a pipeline rather than a project.

Advantages

  • Nothing to install and nothing to store. Multiple regions are already mounted
  • Programmatic: an API another system can call, with job status and artifacts
  • Open to anyone who registers, with no institutional requirement
  • Cost is quoted before you submit and metered per job, from the same rate table
  • Runs on native x86_64, where the platform reproduces its reference results
  • Our validation evidence is published, so you can check the deployment rather than trust it

What it costs you

  • Money. Compute and storage are billed. The other three options are free
  • You cannot modify the science. If you need to change a method, build from source
  • The regions and BBP versions we have installed, not any you like
  • A dependency on us, and on our uptime
  • Currently a prototype and user test environment, not a service with a support contract

This is a prototype, and at this stage we are more interested in whether it is useful than in signing anyone up. Accounts are available to people willing to try it and tell us what works, what is missing, and what it would need to be worth paying for.

Try it and tell us what you think → How the API works API reference

The Broadband Platform is developed by the Statewide California Earthquake Center and its contributors and distributed under a BSD 3-Clause licence. Work using it should cite Maechling, P. J., F. Silva, S. Callaghan, and T. H. Jordan (2015), SCEC Broadband Platform: System Architecture and Software Implementation, Seismological Research Letters 86(1), doi:10.1785/0220140125. BBP Services is an independent operator and is not affiliated with SCEC, Quakeworx, or NSF.