Welcome to the latest edition of the SNIC training newsletter.  This week we have a very mixed list of topics, ranging from basic training for new users to advanced topics in parallel computing.  This week we have two unusual items.  Readers who like to engage more with CodeRefinery have the opportunity to become a workshop tutor.  For research software engineers we like to high light the Nordic-RSE Get together.

Training aimed at new users of the SNIC infrastructure:

Online interactive support and discussion forum:

• LUNARC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 2nd November 2020 from 14:00 until 15:00

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

Events for Research Software Engineers

National HPC user survey of ENCCS

Training overview:

Online training event: “C3SE Introductory Seminar” in Gothenburg, 6 November 2020, 13:15

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: https://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 seminar: Data transfer and storage in HPC, 29 October 2020 at 14:00

Transferring data between an HPC system and another computer system is a common task for anyone utilising an HPC system for their work.   The webinar will describe how to transfer data from systems under Windows, macOS, UNIX and Linux to an HPC cluster.  

Time: 29th October at 14:00

For more information and registration visit:  http://www.lunarc.lu.se/training/data-transfer-and-storage-in-hpc-29-october-2020/

LUNARC zoom-in - a virtual open-house: 2nd November 2020 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:

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

Last chance to register: ENCCS/NVIDIA online workshop: Fundamentals of Accelerated Computing with CUDA C/C++, October 27-28 

When: October 27-28, 09:00-12:30.

Where: Online

Further information and registration: https://enccs.se/events/fundamentals-of-accelerated-computing-with-cuda-cc/ 

Welcome to the first official ENCCS workshop which will be held in collaboration with NVIDIA! This workshop teaches the fundamental tools and techniques for accelerating C/C++ applications to run on massively parallel GPUs with CUDA. You’ll learn how to write code, configure code parallelization with CUDA, optimize memory migration between the CPU and GPU accelerator, and implement the workflow that you’ve learned on a new task – accelerating a fully functional, but CPU-only, particle simulator for observable massive performance gains. At the end of the workshop, you’ll have access to additional resources to create new GPU-accelerated applications on your own.

Prerequisites

Basic C/C++ competency, including familiarity with variable types, loops, conditional statements, functions, and array manipulations. No previous knowledge of CUDA programming is assumed

PRACE/CodeRefinery online workshop in best practices and tools for research software, Nov 17-19 and 24-26, 9:00-12:30

In this course, you will become familiar with tools and best practices for version control and reproducibility in modern research software development. The main focus is on using Git for efficiently writing and maintaining research software.

We will not teach programming, but we teach the tools you need to use programming well. We assume that you are familiar with the programming language that you use in your work and research. We try to keep the course as language-independent as possible but we will show some basic code examples in Python.

This is an informal and interactive online event with type-along type of presentations, live coding, and demos. Short tutorials alternate with practical exercises.

Further information and registration: https://coderefinery.github.io/2020-11-17-online/ 

Engage as a tutor on the CodeRefinery online workshop, Nov 17-19 and 24-26, 9:00-12:30

Engage in the successful CodeRefinery workshop program, by becoming a tutor for the exercise sessions and discussion groups.  If you have been to a CodeRefinery workshop, you will have experienced  a very hands-on approach to training with frequent exercise sessions and group discussions.  In online workshops these sessions take place in breakout rooms with 5-7 participants and 1-2 workshop tutors.  Tutors answer questions from the learners, guide them through the exercises and try to keep time.  If needed, tutors can call on experienced trainers in the background to help answer tricky questions.  The tutors are an important part of the CodeRefinery teaching concept and all the workshops to scale to many more people than the instructors could  otherwise manage!

If you have previously attended a CodeRefinery workshop, and/or use some of the tools and methods covered in a workshop (Git, software testing, modern documentation platforms etc.), then please consider joining a CodeRefinery workshop as a tutor! Being a tutor is fun, it expands your network and develops your teaching and mentoring skills.  You always learn something new about a subject by teaching it!

If you would like to help on the upcoming workshop in November, please sign up as a tutor on https://coderefinery.github.io/2020-11-17-online/.

If you would like to engage in later workshops, please register as a tutor on the notify-me form (https://indico.neic.no/event/135/surveys/36). 

PRACE online course "MPI: A Short Introduction to One-sided Communication”, starting 26 October 2020

This online course will start on the 26th of October and will run for two weeks, with an estimated effort of 4 hours per week. During this time you will be guided through the concepts of one-sided communication and learn how to perform such data movements correctly and efficiently using MPI (with C and Fortran bindings). Several examples and exercises will illustrate the use of these routines and help to understand their benefits. You will also be able to challenge your knowledge with some quizzes!

This online course has been developed by HLRS, ASTRON and SURFsara, with the sponsorship of PRACE. You can register for free through FutureLearn.

For more information and registration see: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mpi-one-sided/2

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: https://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

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:  https://sunet.artologik.net/uu/enccs-training-survey

We would appreciate to receive your answer by *Friday 30th of October*

SNIC training webpage

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