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NAISS Training News Letter

No 9, 7 September 2023

– Published 7 September 2023

Welcome to the latest addition of the NAISS training newsletter.   We newly list the next NAISS zoom-in.  Zoom-in allows you to discuss directly with a number of HPC experts associated with NAISS in an informal setting.   As a reminder we resist a number of events from previous newsletters which are still accepting registration.

Overview

NAISS events

  • Online Nordic HPC workshops: “Mondays with Matlab”, 11, 18, 25 and 26 of September 2023
  • Training course: “Introduction to GPUs”, 15 & 22 September and 12-13 October 2023
  • Online workshop: “Basic Singularity: Running and Building Singularity Containers”, 6 October 2023
  • Online course “introduction to running R, Python, and Julia in HPC”, 17-19 October 2023

Online interactive support and discussion forum

  • NAISS Zoom-in - a virtual open-house, 28 September from 14:00 until 15:00

CodeRefinery training

  • Online workshop: “CodeRefinery workshop”, 19-21 and 26-28 September, 2023

Training events organised by HPC centres in Sweden

  • PDC lunchtime seminar: Visualization Tools for Computational Chemistry, Stockholm, 19 September 2023
  • Online training course: "Introduction to Kebnekaise", 21 September 2023

LUMI training event

  • Hackathon: “Optimizing for AMD GPUs”, Kraków, Poland, 27 November - 1 December 2023

ENCCS training events

  • Julia for High Performance Scientific Computing, online, October 10-13,  9:00-12:00 CEST
  • Quantum Autumn School, Gothenburg, October 25-27, 9:00-17:00

NAISS training

Online Nordic HPC workshops: “Mondays with Matlab”, 11, 18, 25 and 26 of September 2023

Mondays with MATLAB are back!  Are you interested in accessing MATLAB at a HPC centre?  Do you want to improve performance by parallelising your MATLAB code? Or are you interested in AI, Machine Learning or Deep Learning?

Mondays with MATLAB is a three-part online workshop series intended for users using MATLAB on HPC environments. Featuring in-depth, interactive sessions on Parallel Programming with MATLAB and Machine and Deep Learning workflows with MATLAB, these workshops are aimed to provide you with the knowledge you need to scale up your computing needs by harnessing the power of a HPC centre or a cluster near you.

A highlight of this series is the 3rd workshop where you will be taken through the steps required in accessing a HPC environment in a hands-on session. Participating HPC centers are NAISS (Sweden), DTU (Denmark), Sigma2 (Norway) and CSC (Finland) – so users who intend to access these HPC centers will find it most useful. Please select your respective country to access the right workshop!

The event is free, so please register at the Matlab workshop page (MathWorks).

Training course: “Introduction to GPUs”, 15 & 22 September and 12-13 October 2023

For researchers who are new to using GPUs: learn about GPU systems and how to adapt your existing CPU research code for GPUs.

15 & 22 September (afternoons only, online) – understand GPUs and what types of problems to use them for, try basic exercises running jobs on the Dardel GPUs and using OpenMP, HIP and SYCL

12 & 13 October (all day, in person at PDC) – practise adapting a short piece of code for GPUs with OpenMP, HIP or SYCL, plus you will have a chance to start adapting your own code

For details about the course (including the schedule and how to register), see the GPU introduction course page (PDC).

Online workshop: Basic Singularity: Running and Building Singularity Containers, 6 October 2023

The online workshop is an introduction to the basic concepts of containerised software environment solutions within the Singularity framework (Sylabs).

During the workshop you will have the opportunity to follow the interactive guide on

  • how to run Singularity containers
  • how to build your own
  • good (and bad) practices on designing and building Singularity recipes
  • build and/or host container remotely and what are the limitations

To fully benefit from the workshop, basic Linux system administration experience is highly desirable i.e. knowledge of package management and common tools for building and managing software: git, pip, conda, wget, curl, etc.

Please follow the instructions to install Singularity (GitHub) on your computer before the workshop.

When: 9:15-12:00, 13:15-16:00 - 6 October 2023

Where: online via Zoom

For more information and registration, please visit the singularity workshop page (UPPMAX)

Online course introduction to running R, Python, and Julia in HPC, 17-19 October 2023

HPC2N, in cooperation with UPPMAX, is offering a three-day ONLINE training course "Introduction to running R, Python, and Julia in HPC".

Learn how to run R, Python, and Julia at Swedish HPC centres. We will show you how to find and load the needed modules, how to write a batch script, as well as how to install and use your own packages, and more.

The course will consist of lectures interspersed with hands-on sessions where you get to try out what you have just learned.

This course will consist of three days, 9:00 - 15:00, one for each language. Participation is free and open to all current and prospective users of NAISS.

Time and date: 09:00 - 15:00, 17-19 October 2023

Location: online via Zoom

For more information and registration, see the course website:

Online interactive support and discussion forum

NAISS Zoom-in - a virtual open-house, 28 September from 14:00 until 15:00

You are invited to a virtual meeting room.  Inside the meeting room we like to discuss services offered by NAISS and how they can be used for your computational needs, help you process your data and visualise your results.  Participants are highly encouraged to pose their own questions.

We also expect to have experts available from C3SE, HPC2N and LUNARC, to discuss the University operated HPC services at Chalmers, Umeå and Lund University.

The virtual room is reached through the Zoom link for the Zoom-in session 28 September.

CodeRefinery training

Online workshop: CodeRefinery workshop, 19-21 and 26-28 September, 2023

Are you writing code and managing data for your research? Do you feel like wasting too much time on manual work? Do you struggle to understand and reuse older code?

Join the CodeRefinery workshop September 19-21 and 26-28, 2023, for free and online.

The workshop covers good coding practices, reproducible research principles, and using Git for collaboration. It offers breakout room exercises with team leaders, and you can register as a team or volunteer as a team leader. But you can also follow on your own if you prefer. In-person exercise sessions are available in some locations.

Register and find more information at the CodeRefinery workshop page (GitHub)

Training events organised by HPC centres in Sweden

PDC lunchtime seminar: Visualization Tools for Computational Chemistry, Stockholm, 19 September 2023

For more information and access to registration please visit:

Online training course: "Introduction to Kebnekaise", 21 September 2023

HPC2N is offering an ONLINE training course "Introduction to Kebnekaise". It will be given on 2023-09-21, 09:00 - 17:00.

We begin with a short OPTIONAL introduction to the Linux operating system (OS) that is used on HPC2N's compute cluster, and is the most common OS in HPC clusters. This part is only meant for complete beginners to the Linux operating system, and can be omitted if you are proficient already.

Then, we continue with an introduction to HPC and HPC2N, before moving to a walk-through of the Kebnekaise system, including the GPUs. In the afternoon we go through the module system and take a look at how to submit jobs. During the hands-on you will get the opportunity to try loading modules, compile a program, and submit a job to the Kebnekaise cluster.

Eligibility: since Kebnekaise is no longer a NAISS cluster, this course in only available to local users. This is defined as users who are current or future members of projects with a PI affiliated with HPC2N's partner sites (UmU, SLU, LTU, MIUN, IRF). Participation is free.

For more information and registration, see the Kebnekaise introduction course page (HPC2N).

LUMI training events

Hackathon: “Optimizing for AMD GPUs”, Kraków, Poland, 27 November - 1 December 2023

The hackathon is a way for you to get free help to optimise your software for the AMD GPUs available on LUMI-G!

You can apply if you are a researcher or a company located in either one of the LUMI consortium countries or a member of EuroHPC country. Ph.D. students and holders of postdoctoral fellowships are also eligible to apply. Up to six projects will be selected for this hackathon. The selected projects will receive help from HPE and AMD staff of the HPE Center of Excellence for LUMI and from members of the LUMI User Support Team. The hackathon will be 5 days on site Kraków, Poland. Additionally, we will have a one day online preparation day which includes an introduction to profiling CPU and GPU code on LUMI. The deadline for applications is 25. September 2023.

For more information and how to apply see the hackathon page (LUMI).

ENCCS training events

Julia for High Performance Scientific Computing, online, October 10-13,  9:00-12:00 CEST

Julia is a modern high-level programming language that is fast (on par with traditional HPC languages like Fortran and C) and relatively easy to write like Python or Matlab. It thus solves the “two-language problem”, i.e. when prototype code in a high-level language needs to be combined with or rewritten in a lower-level language to improve performance.

ENCCS is organising two back-to-back online workshops on Julia in October - this one is about high-performance scientific computing, while the other on October 2-5 will deal with high performance data analysis and machine learning. The first day of both workshops will be an introduction to the Julia language.

After attending the workshop you will:

  • Be comfortable with Julia’s syntax, in-built package manager, and development tools.
  • Understand core language features like its type system, multiple dispatch, and composability.
  • Be able to write your own Julia packages from scratch.
  • Know how to write highly performant Julia code.
  • Have an overview of Julia’s parallelization and GPU-porting strategies.
  • Be able to write parallel and GPU-ported Julia code which runs efficiently on an HPC system.

For further information and registration, please visit the Julia for HPC workshop page (ENCCS).

Quantum Autumn School, Gothenburg, October 25-27, 9:00-17:00

Recent developments in quantum technology are bringing the world closer to a new technological revolution – the advent of usable quantum computers able to provide enormous acceleration to important computational tasks. In coming years, quantum computing is expected to have a significant impact on many areas of research that can utilise computational modelling. ENCCS is now again joining forces with the Wallenberg Centre of Quantum Technologies (WACQT) and the Nordic/Baltic NordIQuEst project to deliver a three-day autumn school covering the fundamentals of quantum computing.

The main attendance mode of the autumn school will be on-site at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. On-site participants will also be treated to social and networking events and a guided tour to see the QAL9000 quantum computer at Chalmers. However, seminars and hands-on sessions will also be broadcast live for online participants who will be able to participate actively in the school through live Q&A and chat.

The school will cover:

  • Introduction to key concepts: quantum states, qubits, quantum algorithms
  • Overview of the main QC hardware approaches.
  • Overview of the QC software stack.
  • Integration of QC with classical computing: hybrid classical/quantum algorithms and HPC-QC systems.
  • QC programming in high-level languages for use cases in optimisation, finance, life science and quantum chemistry.

Morning lectures will be combined with afternoon hands-on sessions where participants learn to use high-level QC programming languages using either simulators or real quantum computers.

For further information and registration, please visit the quantum autumn school page (ENCCS).