HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING Developing skills for HPC
ROBERT ROE TAKES A LOOK AT THE TRAINING AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCIENTISTS USING HPC IN THEIR RESEARCH
Training and the development of specific skills to use HPC are becoming increasingly important
as the number of users and potential applications continues to rise. Scientists and engineers in many disciplines can make use of HPC, it is not just a technology reserved for climate science and large scale astronomy simulations. For many years most HPC users worked in national labs and were a relatively consistent set of employees involved in long-term research programmes. They were well supported by their research centres and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that continuously contributed time to training users and maintaining knowledge on the available tools. In contrast, many of the HPC users today have very different characteristics – they use HPC facilities intermittently and for short bursts of time. Today many more people need access to HPC facilities but do not necessarily have the experience and skills needed. While these new users may be familiar
with traditional cloud computing, which provides them with a bare-bones infrastructure to scale applications, they are less familiar with the HPC framework, which offers remote systems with pre- installed environments that are configured and targeted toward scientific computation. Even though some uniformity does
exist in the HPC world in terms of software stacks, the environments remain largely heterogeneous and therefore the users will be exposed to toolsets that they have never used before – or have very little experience with. As a result, these new users are not well-versed in the tools or systems, nor do they have a desire to gain in-depth, working knowledge of the infrastructure. Furthermore, these users will rarely want
to participate in full-scale training about a system they will only be using sporadically. This creates new challenges for developing
4 Scientific Computing World Spring 2021
at hand, versus the model of a technical college that provides a full curriculum for developing an expert.
Entry level and regional HPC training and support There are several opportunities for HPC training and skills development at various levels from introductory courses to application development and preparatory access to large scale tier-0 facilities. In this feature, we will discuss options available predominantly in the UK and Europe but this will by no means be an exhaustive list of the training options available to HPC users.
In the UK, training and skills development
“HPC training and education is a hugely important topic in the context of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking”
successful training procedures for these HPC users. In the typical HPC world, the most
common type of training requests are either for an introductory course at the original purchase and delivery of the system, or for a set of advanced training packages for fine tuning the skillsets of seasoned users. There has been an increase in the number of on-demand users and this in turn changes the type of training requests. There is a noticeable shift from users looking to learn all the bells and whistles to users wanting to maximise the use of tools for a specific problem. This is because the goal of HPC for these users is to solve a particular problem, to run a set of applications and receive a result, rather than to become experts in the use of HPC. As HPC users become more common, and the use cases become more ubiquitous, it stands to reason that some users just need HPC on-demand rather than the traditional model. How can HPC facilities support these sporadic or part time users alongside the more traditional users that demand frequent access to HPC systems. HPC facilities are being challenged to
provide more frequent and accessible training. In essence, they will have to take on a consumer-oriented model, in which the advice is narrowly focused on the task
is predominantly provided by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) and universities that have their own HPC resources. The EPCC, for example, is one of the major providers of training in high performance computing (HPC) in Europe, offering a range of courses for users of HPC throughout the UK and Europe. ARCHER Training: The UK national
supercomputing service, ARCHER, provides large amounts of HPC training that is free for all UK academics. Courses cover a range of abilities from beginner to advanced and are run at a variety of locations around the UK. University of Bristol ACRC Training: The
Advanced Computing Research Centre (ACRC) at the University of Bristol runs a number of HPC training courses and the majority of their material is freely-available online for people to study remotely. Bristol offers training and support
across several primary areas including Linux and specific training for the various clusters at the university’s disposal. Before users are allowed to access the HPC systems they need to demonstrate some understanding of Linux and the University offers short courses on Linux and an intro to HPC training, access to the BlueCrystal HPC systems is also available for more advanced users or those with specific application requirements. PRACE: The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) offers a number of different training opportunities including the PRACE Advanced Training Centre (PATC), PRACE training portal and access to advanced skills development PRACE training centres. These facilities deliver regular programmes of courses in many aspects of HPC and advanced computing. Bristol is an example of a university that offers several courses to support HPC users developing their skills. This includes introductory courses and more advanced offerings for experienced users.
g @scwmagazine |
www.scientific-computing.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42
