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Note: There are upcoming changes to the billing unit model CSC uses in September 2025. Read the FAQ to learn more.

Questions and answers related to the billing unit renewal (2025)

1. What are the new billing units?

The new billing unit (BU) types are HPC, HPC GPU, Cloud and Storage. In other words, CSC's services for research will consume different billing units based on the kind of services used. A summary of which service uses which units is depicted below:

  • HPC billing unit
    • Puhti, Mahti and Roihu jobs without GPU
  • HPC GPU billing unit
    • Puhti, Mahti and Roihu jobs with GPU
  • Cloud billing unit
    • cPouta, ePouta, Rahti, Pukki DBaaS, SD Desktop
  • Storage billing unit
    • Puhti, Mahti and Roihu Lustre storage, Allas, Shared fileservice, SD Connect

Note

LUMI billing is not affected by the billing unit renewal.

2. When are the new billing units taken into use?

The new billing units will be taken into use in September 2025. The exact date will be announced later.

3. Will I need to do something? What will happen to my old billing units?

No, you do not need to do anything. Old unused billing units already granted to projects will be migrated to the new units, i.e. no granted resources are lost. The mapping of old BUs to new BUs will be based on the past usage of the project. In other words, e.g. projects only running GPU jobs on Puhti will not get cloud billing units which they have no use for.

You can check your current BU budget in MyCSC, as well as using the csc-projects command on Puhti and Mahti.

4. How will the BU renewal affect CSC's services?

The migration to new billing units will have minimal effect on service usage and services will be available as usual. However, resource applications will be unavailable during the migration when old billing units are converted into new ones.

5. How will the new billing units affect resource applications?

Resource applications will be done in the four new billing units in the future. This means that users have to consider what kind of resources and services they need before applying for them.

Moreover, the application limits for different resources will be separated based on the capacity available under every billing unit type. So far, all billing unit applications have been processed based on whether they are S-, M-, or L-sized applications. However, 1 million BUs used in cPouta has a much larger impact on the service capacity compared to the same amount of BUs used on Mahti CPU nodes. Thus, the size limits for resource applications will be based on the type of billing unit applied for.

6. Will I lose billing units to the new BU cutter even if my projects use billing units?

The billing unit renewal introduces a "cutter" that will depreciate unused BUs. The billing unit cutter only affects projects that have used less than 40% of their billing units in a 6 month period counted from the last billing unit grant or depreciation check. If a project has used more than that, no resources are cut. The billing unit cutter affects only academic projects with student projects being exempt.

7. When will the first billing unit depreciation happen?

The billing unit cutter is taken into use at the same time as the new units, so the first cuts would happen in March 2026 at the earliest. The billing unit usage of projects is checked six months after either the latest billing unit grant or the latest depreciation check.

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