Welcome to the latest edition of the SNIC training newsletter.

Contents of this issue

• Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure:
• Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar”, 16 March 2020, 13:00
• Online training and support event: “Introduction to NSC”, 31 March 2021 at 10:00
• General HPC training
• Training webinar: "Working effectively with HPC systems", 20 April 2021, 10:00 - 15:00
• Application specific training
• Online training course: Running Molecular Dynamics applications efficiently in HPC, 26 - 27 April 2021
• Online interactive support and discussion forum:
• SNIC zoom-in — a virtual open-house: 18 March from 14:00 until 15:00
• Training events from ENCCS, recommended by SNIC
• ENCCS/CSC Workshop – HIP101. 16 April, 09:00 - 13:00 CET

Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure

Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar”, 16 March 2020, 13:00

Introductory seminar describing know-hows for working with C3SE systems. This online event is intended for all new users providing a comprehensive overview on our systems and how to get started with using them.

Date and time: 16 March 2020, 13:00 - 15:00

The seminar will be offered again on: 9th May, 13:00-15:00

For more information and access to registration, please visit the events page at C3SE.

Online training and support event: “Introduction to NSC”, 31 March 2021 at 10:00

An online event with two parts:

• A short introduction to NSC, which is suitable for new users. The topics include
• the Sigma (LiU) and Tetralith (SNIC) clusters
• the module system
• submitting jobs
• allocating GPU:s for simulations or graphic
• other useful information
• An open session for questions with several NSC application experts attending.

Feel free to join (and leave) whenever depending on your interest. The online event is open for all present and prospective NSC users.

Time: 31 Mar 2021, 10:00 - ca. 11:00 Short introduction to NSC, ca. 11:00 - Open session

The zoom link has been sent out with the email version of the SNIC Training news letter

The presentation will be available on the "Introduction to NSC" page at NSC.

General HPC training

Training webinar: "Working effectively with HPC systems", 20 April 2021, 10:00 - 15:00

This NSC SNIC/PRACE webinar will present useful tools and best practices for working effectively on HPC systems. This will among other things cover methods and skills to help you use allocated resources effectively. It is expected to be of interest for a general HPC system user, both at a more familiar (intermediate) or starting (beginner) level.

Topics include:

• Tools at your end (e.g. terminal, ssh config., file transfer tools, VNC)
• HPC system anatomy (login and compute nodes, interconnect, storage)
• Properties and features of storage areas (e.g. quotas, performance, locality, backups, snapshots, scratch)
• Concept of parallelism (Amdahl’s law), scalability, scheduling and practical advice for good performance
• Software on an HPC system (OS, modules, python envs., concept of build envs., containers with Singularity)
• Ideas and strategies for organizing your workflow (data and file management, traceability and reproducibility)
• Interacting with the Slurm queueing system (requesting resources interactively or in batch)
• Practical examples (preparing, submitting, monitoring and evaluating job efficiency)

While the main part of the content and practices will be useful for HPC systems in general, we will also present examples and special tools specific for the NSC clusters, e.g. Tetralith and Sigma.

For more information and registration, see the HPC webinar page at NSC.

Application specific training

Online training course: "Running MD applications efficiently in HPC", 26 - 27 April 2021

The aim of this HPC2N course is to provide MD users with a set of best practices to improve the performance of their simulations. This will mainly be accomplished by tuning the appropriate SLURM switches and flags proper to the MD packages.

This course will be two half-days. It will have lectures as well as some hands-on sessions where you get to try out what you have just learned. There will also be time for user's to discuss, test, and get help with their own scripts.

NOTE: Due to the COVID-19 situation, the course will be fully online, through Zoom.

For more information and registration, see the "Running MD applications efficiently in HPC" page at HPC2N.

Online interactive support and discussion forum

SNIC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 18 March 2021 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 the SNIC centres 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.

For more information and details on access, please visit the LUNARC zoom-in page.

Training events from ENCCS, recommended by SNIC

ENCCS/CSC Workshop – HIP101. 16 April, 09:00 - 13:00 CET

With the upcoming LUMI supercomputer arriving this year in Finland, as well as the Dardel supercomputer arriving this and next year to PDC in Stockholm, ENCCS and CSC are providing a series of training events for future users of these new systems. The main partitions of both LUMI and Dardel will be based on AMD GPUs – users should thus be ready to port their applications to this new architecture.

This training event will be about porting CUDA applications to HIP. It will provide an extensive dive into the Hipify tools and showcase many examples. After this course, the participants will know how to use the AMD Hipify tools to convert CUDA codes to HIP. They will be familiar with the AMD architecture, issues that could arise from the code conversion, and the differences between CUDA and HIP.

In order to take the course, the participant should be familiar with GPU concepts and CUDA. Any experience with GPUs is welcome. Examples and exercises will be available in different programming languages, including Fortran and C.

Links

• LUMI supecomputer
• Dardel supercomputer
• ENCCS/CSC HIP101 workshop page with registration

Training overview

SNIC training webpage

In addition to these news letters we also provide a SNIC training webpage.

This webpage currently gives an overview on all courses currently planned. It provides links to more information and the actual registration. The webpage also includes training which is expected to be mostly of interest to individual SNIC centres. Information will be added to this page as it becomes available.