ARCHER News

Tuesday 6th November 2018

• HPC Carpentry course
• HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme
• ARCHER and KNL maintenance shutdown - provisional details
• Defensive Programming and Debugging MOOC
• Training : Upcoming ARCHER Training Opportunities

HPC Carpentry course

6-7 Dec 2018 at the Alan Turing Institute, London

This course introduces accessing remote advanced computing facilities via the command line and High Performance Computing (HPC). After completing this course, participants will:

• Understand motivations for using HPC in research
• Understand how HPC systems are put together to achieve performance and how they differ from desktops/laptops
• Know how to connect to remote HPC systems and transfer data
• Be able to use the Bash command line on remote systems
• Know how to use a scheduler to work on a shared system
• Be able to use software modules to access different HPC software
• Be able to work effectively on a remote shared resource

Full details at http://www.archer.ac.uk/training/courses/2018/12/hpc_carpentry_ati/index.php

HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme

Collaborative research visits using High Performance Computing

Call for applications: closing date on 15th November 2018

HPC-Europa3 funds research visits for computational scientists in any discipline which can use High Performance Computing (HPC). Visits can be made to research institutes in Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden or the UK. UK-based researchers can benefit in two ways: either by visiting a research group elsewhere in Europe, or by hosting a research visitor from another country.

What does HPC-Europa3 provide?

• Funding for travel, living and accommodation expenses for visits of up to 13 weeks.
• Access to world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities.
• Technical support to help you make best use of the HPC systems.
• Collaborative environment with an expert in your field of research.

Who is the programme open to?

• Researchers of all levels, from postgraduate to full professors.
• Researchers from academia or industry.
• Researchers currently working in a European Union country or Associated State (see http://bit.ly/2PkVsSV for full list of Associated States).
  
• Researchers may not visit a group in the country where they currently work.
  
• A small number of places are available for researchers working outside these countries - please contact staff@hpc-europa.org for more information.

How do I apply?

Apply online at http://www.hpc-europa.org

The next closing date is 15th November 2018. Closing dates are held 4 times per year. Applications can be submitted at any time. You should receive a decision approximately 6 weeks after the closing date.

For more information and to apply online, visit: http://www.hpc-europa.org/

Follow HPC-Europa3 on Twitter for project news: https://twitter.com/HPCEuropa3

ARCHER and KNL maintenance shutdown - provisional

• The Archer service *may* be shutdown for maintenance from 08:00 to 20:00 on Wednesday 28th November.
• We will confirm the timing and extent of the outage nearer the time.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this essential work.

Defensive Programming and Debugging MOOC

Starts 5th November for 5 weeks - join at any time

What is a software bug? How can we prevent them? How can we find and fix them quickly and efficiently?

If you are a programmer or have ever used software applications, you know that software bugs can have serious consequences and that finding and fixing bugs is a difficult and time consuming task.

In the Defensive Programming and Debugging MOOC, you will learn to minimize the number of bugs, pinpoint and fix them using professional tools and techniques for both serial and parallel programs.

By the end of this course you will feel confident writing high-quality code that is clean, robust and easy to maintain.

Register at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/defensive-programming-and-debugging

This free online supercomputing course is not an ARCHER course but was developed by the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), University of Hasselt and KU Leuven in cooperation with Future Learn, and is likely to be of interest to ARCHER users.

Upcoming Training Opportunities

Registration open now

• OpenMP, Online, Wednesday afternoons 13:30 24th October - 14th November
• Message-passing Programming with MPI, Newcastle, 28-30 Nov 2018
• HPC Carpentry, ATI London, 6-7 Dec 2018
• Hands-on Introduction to HPC, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, 17-18 Jan 2019

Full details and registration at http://www.archer.ac.uk/training/index.php