ARCHER News
Tuesday 31st October 2017
- Join Women in HPC at SC17
- HPC-UK: a new resource for UK researchers
- Performance Portability Virtual Tutorial - Wednesday 8th November 2017 14:00 GMT
- Training : Upcoming ARCHER Training Opportunities
Join Women in HPC at SC17
In a little under two weeks time, Women in HPC (WHPC) will be participating in SC17. We are running a range of activities with a careers theme throughout. If you are going to SC17, there is still time to get involved:
Full details on the full list of WHPC activities is available at: https://www.womeninhpc.org/whpc-sc17/
Workshop: Diversifying the community
Sunday 12th November, 9:00 am - 5:30 pm, Room 503-504, Colorado Convention Center
PRACE & WHPC SC17 Panel: Diversity on the International Stage
Tuesday 14th November, 12:00pm - 12:30 pm, Booth 2171, Colorado Convention Center
Networking and Careers Cocktail Reception: A celebration of women in high performance computing
Tuesday 14th November, 6:15 pm - 8:30 pm, The Corner Office, 1401 Curtis Street
Places are limited, so register soon: https://www.picatic.com/whpc-sc17-networking
BoF: Women in HPC: Non-Traditional Paths to HPC and How They Can and Do Enrich the Field
Wednesday 15th November, 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm, Room 301-303, Colorado Convention Center
BoF: Recruitment: How to Build Diverse Teams
Thursday 16th November, 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm, Room 605, Colorado Convention Center
HPC-UK: a new resource for UK researchers
HPC-UK is a community resource that brings together information to support researchers using HPC, and the people (such as research software engineers) who support those researchers. It provides a coherent view of what is available, how to access it, where to get training, and how to get the most out of HPC applications. Anyone can contribute to the website, note issues or request features through GitHub. HPC-UK provides a central location for researchers to find out about available HPC facilities and to provide support to help them get the most out of using HPC in their research.
The core resource is an open source, community website that provides links to facilities, information on HPC training and how to access HPC facilities, and support to enable researchers to get the most out of HPC applications.
Facilities
It is difficult for researchers to know what HPC facilities are available, and the differences between them. HPC-UK provides an accurate list of the HPC facilities available to UK researchers, both from the UK and internationally. To make the list as relevant as possible, it concentrates on those that have publicised access routes for UK researchers.
Access
It can also be difficult to know how to access HPC facilities. HPC-UK brings together all access routes, making it easy for researchers to assess their options and plan applications. Access routes can vary according to the scale of facilities, and HPC-UK offers a simple way to find out which routes are available on which facilities.
Training
Providing researchers with the skills to exploit HPC facilities is key to getting the most out of the UK investment in HPC. HPC-UK offers a single portal to the HPC training available across the UK and online. The training section contains links to different HPC training options, but in future we will provide a live list of upcoming courses to make it as easy as possible to find out what is available.
Applications
HPC software generally has a much longer lifetime than the hardware in a particular facility, and is at least as important to researchers for the effective use of HPC. HPC-UK provides information on the performance of applications on different HPC facilities to help researchers choose the correct facility for their research and optimise their use of resources. Descriptions of how to compile different applications on various HPC facilities are also provided to help researchers and those who support them to compile their applications on different HPC architectures.
Future plans
We intend to provide a list of local UK HPC Champions to allow researchers to speak in person about their use (or potential use) of HPC, and to increase the amount of application benchmarking information available.
HPC-UK is a collaboration between EPCC, the UK Association of Research Software Engineers, and sites running UK national HPC facilities. To contribute to HPC-UK please feel free to use the GitHub repository or get in touch.
Performance portability on current and upcoming archictures: Virtual Tutorial Wednesday 8th November 2017 14:00 GMT (An hour earlier than our usual slot)
Peter Boyle, University of Edinburgh
Peter will discuss performance portable programming used to develop a data parallel structured grid QCD library. Instructions sets targetted include Arm Neon, IBM BlueGene QPX, Intel SSE, AVX, AVX2 and AVX512, and AMD EPYC processors. Performance as high as 30% of peak is obtained through the compiler in single node code.
He will also discuss performance optimisation for current interconnects and in particular the exploitation of dual rail Omnipath for QCD and for machine learning.
Further details, including joining instructions, can be found at: Virtual Tutorials and Webinars
Upcoming Training Opportunities
- GPU Programming with CUDA 21-22 November 2017 Daresbury
- Hands-on Introduction to HPC 4-5 December 2017 Alan Turing Institute London
- Software Carpentry 11-12 December 2017 Imperial College London
- Advanced OpenMP (in conjuction with INTERTWinE) 12-14 December 2017 Imperial College London
