Welcome to the latest edition of the SNIC training newsletter.  This week we have a number of training events aiming at  new users of SNIC.  We high light more advanced trainings from ENCCS’ schedule.   The newsletter also includes a number of events announced in previous editions.

Contents of this issue

Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure:

•     Online training and support event: “Introduction to NSC and Open Forum”, 3 December 2020 at 10:00
•     Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar” in Gothenburg,  4th December 2020, 10:00
•     Online training course: Introduction to PDC systems, 18 November 2020 at 9:00
•     Online training course: "UPPMAX Introductory Course", Uppsala, 19-22 and 25-28 January, 2021
•     Online training workshop: "Awk Workshop", Uppsala, January 15 and 18, 2021

Online interactive support and discussion forum:

•    LUNARC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 30th November 2020 and 14th December from 14:00 until 15:00

Training events from ENCCS, recommended by SNIC:

•     ENCCS Online Workshop – Intermediate Topics in MPI. December 8-11, 09:00-12:00
•     ENCCS/CSC Practical Deep Learning online workshop. February 16-17, 09:00-17:00

Events for Research Software Engineers:

•     Nordic-RSE Get together online event, Nov 30 - Dec 2, 2020

National HPC user survey of ENCCS:

•     National HPC user survey of ENCCS

Training overview:

•     SNIC training webpage

Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure:

Online training and support event: “Introduction to NSC and Open Forum”, 3 December 2020 at 10:00

An online event with two parts:

    a short introduction to NSC suitable for new users, topics include the Sigma (LiU) and Tetralith (SNIC) clusters, the module system, submitting jobs, allocating GPU:s for simulations or graphics and other useful information.
    An open forum 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: 3 Dec 2020, 10:00 - ca. 11:00 Short introduction to NSC, ca. 11:00 - Open forum

Zoom link: liu-se.zoom.us/j/6988980503
Meeting ID: 698 898 0503, Passcode: 5788717884

The presentation will be available on the event webpage: https://www.nsc.liu.se/support/Events/NSC_intro_Dec2020/

Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar” in Gothenburg, 4 December 2020, 10:00

C3SE introductory seminar describing know-hows for working with our 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.

For more information and registration see: www.c3se.chalmers.se

The training will be repeated on 4 December 2020

Online training course: Introduction to PDC systems, 18 November 2020 at 9:00

This is a 3-hour course centred on how to use the systems that PDC provides. The course will focus on basic and advanced methods for using PDC's systems. It will cover some background, what clusters are available, applying for PDC resources, how to login to PDC's systems, running software on different nodes at PDC, storing data on different file systems, compiling code, and more.

For more information and registration see: https://www.pdc.kth.se/about/events/introduction-to-pdc-systems-course-november-2020-1.1021024

Online training course: "UPPMAX Introductory Course", Uppsala, 19-22 and 25-28 January, 2021

This 8 half-days course provides an introduction to the high-performance computing (HPC) environment offered at Uppmax.  It offers an overview of how the systems work and covers skills from basic Linux usage to advanced tips and tricks, including Python scripting.  Many of the concepts discussed in the course will also apply to systems hosted at other HPC centres in Sweden (SNIC) and beyond (e.g. PRACE).  Participation is open to all existing and prospective users of HPC from Swedish institutions.

When: January 19-22 and 25-28, 2021

For more information and registration, please visit: https://www.uppmax.uu.se/support/courses-and-workshops/introductory-course-winter-2021/

Online training workshop: "Awk Workshop", Uppsala, January 15 and 18, 2021

This two days workshop aims to promote the awk tool for use in everyday research work and urges you to find solutions yourself rather than expecting ready-made ones.  Thus, the material given during the seminar will not be a complete guide or manual.  The purpose of the workshop is to give an overview of the capabilities of the awk language and to underline some of its particular strengths as well as its disadvantages.

When: January 15 and 18, 2021

For more information and registration, please visit:
https://www.uppmax.uu.se/support/courses-and-workshops/awk-workshop-winter-2021/

Online interactive support and discussion forum:

LUNARC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 30th November 2020 and 14th December from 14:00 until 15:00

LUNARC invites you to a virtual meeting room.  Inside the meeting room we like to discuss LUNARC and SNIC services 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 sessions:

    30th November 2020 from 14:00 until 15:00
    14th December 2020 from 14:00 until 15:00


For more information and details on access, please visit: http://www.lunarc.lu.se/support/lunarc-zoom-in/

Training events from ENCCS, PRACE and CodeRefinery, recommended by SNIC

ENCCS Online Workshop – Intermediate Topics in MPI. December 8-11, 09:00-12:00

The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is the de facto standard for distributed memory parallelism in high performance computing (HPC). MPI is the dominant programming model for modern day supercomputers and will continue to be critical in enabling researchers to scale up their HPC workloads to forthcoming pre-exascale and exascale systems within EuroHPC and elsewhere.

This workshop targets programmers in both academia and industry who already have experience with basic MPI and are ready to take the next step to more advanced usage. Topics which will be covered include communicators, groups, derived data types, one-sided communication, non-blocking collectives and hybrid MPI+threading approaches. Lectures will be interleaved with hands-on exercises. All exercises will be written in C, but the instructors will be able to answer questions about MPI in Fortran and Python.

Registration and further information: enccs.se/events/2020/intermediate-topics-in-mpi/

ENCCS/CSC Practical Deep Learning online workshop. February 16-17, 09:00-17:00

In collaboration with CSC in Finland, ENCCS is offering a workshop on February 16-17 on Deep Learning. The course is at an introductory level and will give a practical introduction to deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, GPU computing, and tools to train and apply deep neural networks for natural language processing, images, and other applications. The course consists of lectures and hands-on exercises. Keras and PyTorch will be used in the exercise sessions.

Participants are assumed to have working knowledge of Python and a suitable background in data analysis, machine learning, or a related field. Previous experience in deep learning is not required, but the fundamentals of machine learning are not covered in this course. Basic knowledge of a Linux/Unix environment will be assumed.

Registration and further information: enccs.se/events/enccscsc-practical-deep-learning-workshop/

Events for Research Software Engineers

Nordic-RSE Get together online event, Nov 30 - Dec 2, 2020

Welcome to the first online get-together event of the Nordic Research Software Engineer initiative on Nov 30 to Dec 2!

Are you employed to develop software for research? Or are you simply spending more time developing software than conducting research? Then you have much in common with a growing international network of research software engineers, RSEs. The Nordic-RSE initiative aims to build a community of RSEs in the Nordics, plan meetings and workshops where knowledge can be shared, organize a conference biannually, and provide assistance in starting local RSE groups or hiring RSE staff in Nordic universities.

This online event will start with two invited talks on November 30 to set the stage, and will be followed by free-form conversations, short talks, workshops, or other types of contributions on December 1-2. Do you have an idea for a technical talk or short workshop that might not fit into a conference in your academic domain but might appeal to other technical people? Please consider submitting a lightweight abstract! If you're unsure whether your idea fits the scope, you can get in touch to discuss it or browse the programme of the last UK-RSE conference in 2019 to see the list of RSE topics discussed there. You can of course also register without presenting!

More details, a registration form and information abstract submission can be found on the event page: nordic-rse.org/events/2020-online-get-together/
Join us for the first Nordic-RSE get-together to develop your skills, meet like-minded people, learn about new job opportunities or find people to hire, and join an advocacy network for better research!

National HPC user survey of ENCCS

National HPC user survey of ENCCS

Based on the initiation of the Swedish Research Council, Vinnova and the EuroHPC Joined Undertaking a Swedish national HPC Competence Center ENCCS (EuroCC National Competence Center Sweden) has been established on 1 September 2020. ENCCS is one of the 33 national HPC Competence centers across Europe.

The mission of ENCCS is to develop competence, knowledge and support in Sweden to enable academic and industrial researchers and high performance computing (HPC) users to take advantage of both forthcoming (pre-)exascale EuroHPC resources as well as modern artificial intelligence and high-performance data analytics (AI/HPDA) methodologies. ENCCS and SNIC will be collaborating in these activities within Sweden.

A key part of this mission will be to deliver training events for HPC/AI/HPDA users and developers who aim to scale up their workloads or adapt their HPC/AI/HPDA software to new or different hardware platforms. Results from this survey will help us in mapping out a training portfolio for the coming years and getting a better understanding of existing competencies in Sweden. Whether you are an early-stage HPC/AI/HPDA user or a seasoned developer, in an academic or industry environment, your participation is important. It also gives you an opportunity to influence future training events!
When possible, training events will be organized in collaboration with SNIC training and advanced user support.

Link to the survey:  sunet.artologik.net/uu/enccs-training-survey

We would appreciate to receive your answer by Friday 20th of November.

Training overview:

SNIC training webpage

In addition to these news letters we also provide a SNIC training webpage: docs.snic.se/wiki/Training

This webpage currently gives an overview on all courses currently planed.  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.