Welcome to the latest edition of the SNIC training newsletter. In this newsletter we newly advertise training in task-based parallelism. We also recommend 4 new events from ENCCS.

• Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure
• Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar”, 9 May 2020, 13:00
• General HPC training
• Training webinar: "Working effectively with HPC systems", 20 April 2021, 10:00 - 15:00
• Training in Parallel computing
• Online training course: "Task-based parallelism in scientific computing", 10-12 May 2021
• Application specific training
• ENCCS/PDC VeloxChem Workshop: Quantum Chemistry from Laptop to HPC, May 6-7, 09:00-12:30 CEST
• Online interactive support and discussion forum
• SNIC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 22nd April 2021 from 14:00 until 15:00
• Training events from ENCCS, recommended by SNIC
• ENCCS/HiDALGO Workshop on High-performance Data Analytics, April 27, 09:00 - 17:00 (online)
• ENCCS OpenACC/CUDA Training for Beginners, May 4-5, 9:00-12:00 (online)
• ENCCS/Intel Workshop on OpenMP Software Tools, June 1-2, 9:00-12:30 (online)
• ENCCS/Intel OpenMP Hackathon, June 8-9, 9:00-15:30 (online)

Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure

Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar”, 9th May 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.

Data and time: 9th May 2020, 13:00 - 15:00

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

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 course page at NSC.

Training in parallel computing

Online training course: "Task-based parallelism in scientific computing", 10-12 May 2021

HPC2N is offering an ONLINE training course on Task-based parallelism in scientific computing. It will be given on three half-days, 2021-05-(10-12).

The purpose of the course is to learn when a code could benefit from task-based parallelism, and how to apply it. Some codes can be simplified by the use of tasks and some codes can benefit performance-wise from the use of tasks.

The course mainly focuses on the task-pragmas implemented in the newer incarnations of OpenMP, but other task-based runtime systems, e.g., StarPU, and GPU offloading are briefly discussed.

There will be a hands-on part of the course.

Instructor: Mirko Myllykoski

For more information and registration, see the course page for task-basked parallelism at HPC2N.

Application specific training

ENCCS/PDC VeloxChem Workshop: Quantum Chemistry from Laptop to HPC, May 6-7, 09:00-12:30 CEST

Quantum molecular modeling of complex molecular systems is an indispensable and integrated component in advanced material design, as such simulations provide a microscopic insight into the underlying physical processes. ENCCS and PDC will offer training on using the VeloxChem program package This event is for researchers and students already familiar with quantum chemistry that want to learn how to:

• Perform quantum chemical simulations of ground- and excited-state properties on large systems and with efficient use of HPC resources.
• Use an interactive, computationally-oriented approach to teaching quantum chemistry.

Further information, a detailed schedule and a registration link can be found on the VelocChem Workshop page at ENCCS.

Online interactive support and discussion forum

SNIC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 22nd April 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.

Next zoom-in session: 22 April from 14:00 until 15:00

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

Training events from ENCCS, recommended by SNIC

ENCCS/HiDALGO Workshop on High-performance Data Analytics, April 27, 09:00 - 17:00 (online)

This training event will provide a detailed view of high-performance data analytics (HPDA), including concepts and tools that can be used to solve different problems, from the perspective of HiDALGO - a European project on HPC and Big Data Technologies for Global Systems.

Two use-cases will be covered to demonstrate HPDA methods and relevant HPC workflows. First, Urban Air Pollution (UAP) modelling will be introduced along with a software framework for modeling UAP and its dispersion at very high resolution. Second, exploration and manipulation of data available at ECMWF and Copernicus will be introduced and applied in hands-on sessions.

This workshop is for all researchers and developers interested in implementing HPC workflows and HPDA methods. The two use cases are particularly relevant for environmental scientists who want to exploit the strengths of HPC easily and researchers who use weather, climate, or environmental data in their work.

Links

• HiDALGO
• ECMWF
• Copernicus
• Further information and registration at the data analytics workshop page at ENCCS

ENCCS OpenACC/CUDA Training for Beginners, May 4-5, 9:00-12:00 (online)

This course is an introduction to GPU programming using the directive-based OpenACC paradigm and language-extension-based CUDA. The course consists of lectures, type-along and hands-on exercises. Topics covered in the course include the architecture of the GPU accelerators, basic usage of OpenACC and CUDA, how to control data movement between CPUs and GPUs. Basic optimization of the code will also be covered.

After the course, the participants should have the basic skills needed for utilizing OpenACC or CUDA with new or existing programs.

The participants are assumed to have knowledge of Fortran and/or C programming languages. Since participants will be using HPC clusters to run the examples, fluent operation in a Linux/Unix environment is assumed.

https://enccs.se/events/2021/04/enccshidalgo-workshop-on-high-performance-data-analyticsRegister for the event at the OpenACC/CUDA page at ENCCS.

ENCCS/Intel Workshop on OpenMP Software Tools, June 1-2, 9:00-12:30 (online)

OpenMP is a portable and scalable parallel programming model that gives programmers a flexible interface for directive-based programming of shared-memory parallel machines. Used in conjunction with MPI, OpenMP can enable scientific software to be scaled up to large supercomputers. Since version 4.0, OpenMP supports offloading to accelerator devices such as GPUs and thus provides developers with a single framework that can be used across existing and future GPU devices from multiple vendors.

This workshop, split over two half days, will focus on OpenMP usage and performance tuning for both conventional threading on CPUs as well as offloading on GPUs.

For further information and to register, please visit the OpenMP workshop page at ENCCS.

ENCCS/Intel OpenMP Hackathon, June 8-9, 9:00-15:30 (online)

Following the OpenMP training workshop on June 1-2 (see above), ENCCS in collaboration with Intel will host an OpenMP hackathon for teams of researchers and developers who want to:

• either implement OpenMP in their code (for either CPUs or GPUs)
• or optimize their existing OpenMP implementation using state-of-the-art Intel Tools.

To apply for participation in the hackathon you will need a well-defined project with clearly stated goals, and we recommend you to join a team with at least 2 people. Invited teams will be paired up with experts from both Intel and ENCCS/SNIC who will provide hands-on mentoring and pair-programming sessions. Note that hackathon participants should also attend the training workshop on June 1-2.

For further information and to register for the hackathon, please visit the hackathon page at ENCCS.

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.