Entries filed under “HPC Education and Training”

Pointers to screencasts, tutorials, books, and events that can help get you up to speed on the technologies and techniques of HPC.

Student Scholarships Available: Tapia Diversity in Computing Conference

By Ralph | Published September 26, 2012

Attention students: Applications are now being accepted for scholarships to attend the 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference to be held February 7-10, 2011 in Washington, D.C.

The deadline for applications is Dec. 15, 2012. Scholarships covering travel, hotel accommodations, meals, and conference registration are being provided to assure the attendance of those who would otherwise be unable to attend and ensure diversity in conference attendance.

In addition to featuring presentations by some of the leading names in fields related to computing, the Tapia conferences are characterized by their collegial and supportive atmosphere,” said Tapia 2011 General Chair David Patterson, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. “Tapia conferences are often the first professional meetings many of our students attend and these scholarships help ensure that those who could benefit most from such a conference but may not be able to afford it will still have an opportunity to participate.”

Organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing, the Tapia conference honors the significant contributions of Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and a national leader in education and outreach programs. The Tapia Conferences brings together people in CS&E from all educational levels, backgrounds, and ethnicities to celebrate and support the accomplishments of this diverse community.

Also posted in Events | Leave a comment

EADS Launches $10K Student Coding Contest for HPC

By Rich Brueckner | Published September 19, 2012

This week EADS Innovation Works announced an international HPC coding contest for students.

Called “Join the Spirit,” this competition challenges students on solving real-life problems coming from aeronautics and systems applications. The participants can submit their codes which they will test live on a dedicated website: http://jointhespirit.eads.com. The fastest code that solves the problem will be awarded a $10,000 prize, along with receiving recognition from professional scientists and researchers at EADS.

The contest runs until December 31, 2012. Students may work the problem-solving on their own, or in teams of up to three persons. Read the Full Story.

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Nvidia to Award $25K Grants to Students for GPU Computing Research

By Rich Brueckner | Published September 18, 2012

This week Nvidia announced its 12th annual Graduate Fellowship Program, which advances the frontiers of science by awarding grants and providing technical support to graduate students who are doing outstanding GPU-based research.

The relationship NVIDIA fosters with university researchers through its fellowship program provides a conduit for ideas and technology to flow between academia and industry. In addition to financial sponsorship, the fellowship affords student researchers a unique opportunity to cultivate a dialogue with the finest engineering minds in the industry. As a recipient of the NVIDIA Fellowship, I am grateful that the financial and intellectual support I receive from NVIDIA ensures my research is useful and relevant to the graphics industry at large.”- Jared Hoberock, Research Team, Former NVIDIA Fellow

As many as 10 grad students will be selected to win $25K for research in parallel computing. Applications are due January 15, 2013. Read the Full Story.

Also posted in Computing Research, HPC | Leave a comment

Video: Introduction to Parallel Programming with OpenMP

By Rich Brueckner | Published September 10, 2012

In this video, Tim Mattson from Intel gives a lecture on Open MP basics.

We introduce OpenMP; an industry standard API for programming shared memory computers. OpenMP provides a simple path for programmers to get started with parallel programming. In this lecture, we’ll focus on the core features of the original versions of OpenMP.

This video was recorded at the 2012 Par Lab Bootcamp at Berkeley. Download the slides (PDF).


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Free Download: HPC for Dummies

By Rich Brueckner | Published September 8, 2012

The other day my friend Trey was lamenting that there was nothing at the library for novices on high performance computing. Well, the good news is that Douglas Eadline wrote such a book a few years ago with the help of AMD and Sun Microsystems.

In simple terms, HPC enables us to first model then manipulate those things that are important to us. HPC changes everything. It is too important to ignore or push aside. Indeed, HPC has moved from a selective and expensive endeavor to a cost-effective technology within reach of virtually every budget. This book will help you to get a handle on exactly what HPC does and can be. High Performance Computing For Dummies, 2nd AMD Special Edition is intended for anyone who has heard about the many benefits of using HPC (such as streamlining processes or saving money). This book explains what HPC is and shows how it can help you or others within your company.

Download the PDF.

Also posted in HPC | 1 Comment

PGI Accelerator Workshop in Houston, Sept. 26-27

By Rich Brueckner | Published September 6, 2012

nCore Design will host a Programming Workshop on the PGI Accelerator with OpenACC Directives in Houston, Texas Sept. 26-27, 2012. Developed in collaboration with The Portland Group, the two-day interactive workshop provides students with in-depth, hands-on lectures and laboratory exercises.

This course covers concepts and approaches related to programming GPU processors using OpenACC directives and the PGI Accelerator™ programming model. Extensive coverage of GPU hardware, memories, data transport, and performance optimization enable the student to understand the fundamental aspects of GPU programming. In-depth, hands-on lectures and laboratories demonstrate how to apply OpenACC directives to serial software. Using a directive based approach, students will capitalize on low-cost, high performance GPU computing hardware to improve application performance while reducing maintenance and support requirements.

Register now. A Tip of the Hat goes to GPU Science for pointing us to this story.

Also posted in GPUs, HPC, HPC Hardware, HPC Software, Tools | Leave a comment

XSEDE12 Student Programming Challenge Showcases Tomorrow’s HPC Leaders

By Rich Brueckner | Published August 23, 2012

Nancy Carlos writes about her participation in the recent XSEDE12 conference Student Programming Contest.

Each team received identical computational resources — a LittleFe unit running the Bootable Cluster CD software stack — and a set of 10 problems from various scientific problem domain areas, and they had seven hours to complete solutions to the problem set and submit them to contest organizers.

Carlos was part of the winning team that also included Melissa Estrada, David Manosalvas, Justin Peyton, Grace Silva and Manuel Zubieta. The team was coached by Alice Fisher, XSEDE Scholars manager, also of Rice University. Earning the Second Place award was a team from the University of Michigan. Read the Full Story.

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Green Grid Offers New Online Course on Data Center Maturity Model

By Rich Brueckner | Published August 22, 2012

Is it time you brushed up on your sustainable datacenter knowledge? This week the Green Grid announced a new free online training course for its Data Center Maturity Model (DCMM). Designed to help users understand the maturity levels of their data centers and highlight areas for improved efficiency, the course makes the DCMM much easier to apply within an organization.

Without well-defined, consistent and universally accepted goals and direction, the global data center market cannot effectively enhance energy efficiency and sustainability in the data center,” said Mark Aggar, Microsoft representative and Board member, The Green Grid. “The Green Grid, with the help of the industry, developed the DCMM to serve as a comprehensive model, providing clear goals and direction that show what can and should be done over time to improve overall efficiency and sustainability throughout the data center. The DCMM Academy Course is another tool to help data center owners and operators better understand the Model and more effectively adopt it within their individual facilities and data center portfolios.”

Getting started with the Green Grid Academy is easy. I signed up for a free account and had my first online lesson going in just about a minute. Additional courses are available in server power management, constrained capacity, and measures & metrics. Read the Full Story.

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Stony Brook Launches Institute for Advanced Computational Science

By Rich Brueckner | Published August 7, 2012

Stony Brook University is launching a new world-class Institute for Advanced Computational Science. In close collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Institute’s core mission is to advance the science of computing and its applications to solving complex problems in physical sciences, life sciences, medicine, sociology, industry, and finance.

The increasing availability and use of high-performance computers will change the way science will get its answers, industry will develop its products, and society will analyze its needs.

Robert Harrison, formerly of ORNL, was named founding director of the Institute. Read the Full Story.

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Parallel Programming Course Materials Online from 2012 Euro-US Summer School

By Rich Brueckner | Published July 7, 2012

Author Rob Farber writes that his parallel computing course materials are available online from the recent 2012 European-US Summer School in Dublin, Ireland.

I was very happy with how the lessons using the first two chapters of my book “CUDA Application Design and Development” worked. There was sufficient interest that I dedicated my second workshop entirely to OpenACC. For material, I used examples from my first Doctor Dobb’s Journal OpenACC tutorial and pointed students to the article for additional information. By all accounts, both workshops and my talk were a success!

You can view the PowerPoint slides in slideshow mode to see the animations.

Also posted in HPC, HPC Software | 4 Comments

Video: HPC at the University of Colorado and the Student Cluster Competition

By Rich Brueckner | Published June 18, 2012

In this video, Doug Smith from the University of Colorado presents: HPC at the University of Colorado and the Student Cluster Competition. Recorded at the HPC Advisory Council Workshop at ISC’12 in Hamburg.

Also posted in Events, HPC, HPC Advisory Council Workshop, ISC12 | Leave a comment

Video: Scalable Computing for Drug Discovery

By Rich Brueckner | Published June 7, 2012

In this video, Cynthia Peterson from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville presents on the IGERT project for Scalable Computing and Leading Edge Innovative Technologies for Biology.

This research aims to develop a supercomputing-based research tool based on validated and widely used docking approaches adapted for high-throughput screening of millions of compounds in a single day. Existing programs are adapted to use a Message Passing Interface (MPI) protocol to enable parallel computations of a target protein on thousands of processors simultaneously via massively parallel architectures. Virtual screening can now be run on over 65,000 processors in parallel on a supercomputer and essentially achieve in a day what used to take several weeks. These same tools can also be used to facilitate and expedite screening of prospective pharmaceuticals for toxicity and side effects. Importantly, this technological advance also allows the research community to simulate complex scenarios in cells containing multiple binding proteins, expanding isolated virtual in-vitro binding tests to multi-component virtual cell-based assays.


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Place Your Bets: ISC’12 Student Cluster Competition

By Rich Brueckner | Published June 2, 2012

Are you ready to place your bets for the ISC’12 Student Cluster Competition? Our intrepid reporter, Dan Olds has posted a series of profiles on each of the teams.

Team Germany story

  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany is the lone European entry in the ISC’12 Student Cluster Competition. Founded in 1825, it’s one of Germany’s leading science, engineering, and technical universities. Mathematics and natural sciences, along with engineering sciences, are the main focus of 74% of their 22,552 student population.”

 

American Teams

  • The University of Colorado team has more institutional experience in the student clustering game than all of the other competitors combined. They’ve competed in all five of the SC student cluster challenges… Last year in Seattle, they brought more memory per node (126GB vs. 64GB) and a huge number of AMD Interlagos cores…”
  • Stony Brook University has been to the big cluster dance before. They were there for the first SC competition way back in ’07, and won the overall crown at SC09 in Portland. They returned to New Orleans in 2010 to defend their title with a Cray-based design that was one of the first systems to utilize GPUs.”

 

Chinese Teams

  • Tsinghua University. We don’t have a lot of first-hand knowledge about TU. It’s based in Beijing… They’re perennially ranked as one of the top three science and technology universities in China – sort of like MIT in the U.S.”
  • The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT)… rocketed onto the world stage when they unveiled Tianhe-1A, the world’s fastest supercomputer, in 2010. This 2.56 Petaflop super was also the largest hybrid system in the world, using 14,336 Xeon processors combined with 7,168 NVIDIA M2050 Tesla GPUs. NUDT… participated in the SC11 Student Cluster Competition in Seattle last fall. They finished just barely behind Team Taiwan (another team that optimized their codes for GPUs), but came within an eyelash of winning it all.”

We know our favorites to win, but we’ll save that for when the teams face off in Hamburg starting on June 18.

Also posted in Events, HPC, ISC12 | 1 Comment

Video: High Schoolers Build Supercomputer in Ontario

By Rich Brueckner | Published June 1, 2012

In this video, Lorenzo Berardinetti describes how high school students built a supercomputer in Ontario and why this type of hands-on instruction leads to critical thinking. Recorded May 31, 2012.

Working with staff from SciNet, Canada’s largest open supercomputing centre, the students at the SATEC school, (many of whom have been part of the school’s ICT Specialist High Skills Major program) with the help of their teacher Sacha Noukhovitch and their ICT department, learned how to write parallel programs to tackle the biggest computations, faster. They learned to use OpenMP to make use of all the processors on modern motherboards, and MPI to communicate between different nodes within a cluster.

Read the Full Story.

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Interview: PRACE Scientific Conference at ISC’12 to Showcase European HPC

By Rich Brueckner | Published May 31, 2012

The European PRACE Research Infrastructure announced an award this week of 120 million core hours on the new CRAY XE6 Hermit supercomputer at HLRS. With their PRACE Scientific Conference 2012 coming up at ISC’12, I caught up with Maria Ramalho to learn more about what else PRACE has in store for HPC.

insideHPC: The European Commission has doubled its investment in HPC as it wants the E.U. to be exascale competent by 2020. Does PRACE have an operational plan to help administering this effort?

Maria Ramalho: The European Commission has published a Communication for review by the European Parliament and the Council. In this Communication the EC proposes a doubling of the investment in HPC. This has therefore not been agreed nor decided on yet. PRACE is mentioned in the Communication, but does not have a plan of action yet as – again – the Communication is still a proposal.

insideHPC: In conjunction with ISC’12, the PRACE Scientific Conference 2012 will be held on Sunday, June 17. What are the goals of the program and who will be the keynote speakers?

Maria Ramalho: The goal is to highlight advances in large scale simulation and key results obtained by the top European scientists, with support of PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe. The European Commission and PRACE director Dr. Maria Ramalho will present their visions for HPC in Europe. The programme will include a short meeting of the User Forum which will provide an excellent opportunity for users and prospective users to exchanges ideas and experiences

The keynote speakers are:

  • Paolo Carloni, German Research School for Simulation Sciences GmbH
    • Excess proton at water/hydrophobic interfaces: A Car-Parrinello MD study.

 

  • Bing Liu, Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung
    • A dislocation dynamics study of dislocation cell formation and interaction between a low angle grain boundary and an in-coming dislocation.

 

  • Jeremie Bec, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur
    • Droplet growth by coalescence in turbulent clouds: kinetics, fluctuations, and universality.

 

  • Yves Ineichen, Paul Scherrer Institut, PRACE Award Winner
    • A Fast and Scalable Low Dimensional Solver for Charged Particle Dynamics in Large Particle Accelerators.

insideHPC: PRACE now has at least four production systems online as computational resources: JUGENE, CURIE, HERMIT, and FERMI. What kinds of supercomputers are next on the horizon?

Maria Ramalho:As announced in spring 2012, we will add the SuperMuc, provided by GCS/LRZ, which is an IBM I DataPlex system. The new Spanish system, successor of MareNostrum of BSC is yet to come during 2012/2013.

insideHPC: Does PRACE have any Summer School activities planned for 2012?

Maria Ramalho: We have two Summer School programs in 2012:

  • PRACE Summer School on Code Optimisation for Multi-Core and Intel MIC Architecture, Lugano (CH), June 21-23, 2012
    • PRACE is pleased to announce the Summer School on Code Optimisation for Multi-Core and Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Lugano, Switzerland. In this three day intensive event participants will focus on programming and tuning techniques for modern multi- and many-core processors with a particular focus on the Intel® Many Integrated Core architecture..Please Read more
  • EU-U.S. Summer School
    • The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project and the European Union Seventh Framework Program’s Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) are pleased to announce the third International Summer School on High Performance Computing (HPC) Challenges in Computational Sciences, June 24-28, 2012, in Dublin, Ireland.
  • Please read more at http://www.prace-ri.eu/EU-U-S-Summer-School

insideHPC: What will PRACE be showcasing at their ISC’12 exhibit?

Maria Ramalho: In ISC´12 PRACE will be exhibiting its Tier-0 infrastructure of Peta-scale systems. PRACE is proudly announcing the PRACE Award winner of 2012 and The Most Innovative Industrial HPC Application in Europe.

Also posted in Compute, Events, HPC, HPC Hardware, ISC12 | Leave a comment

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