As parallel packages for computational science become more sophisticated, it becomes more difficult for a researcher to understand the most important factors that determine end-to-end productivity from initial input data to final result. Aspects such as file IO and data transfer can be just as important in practice as the performance and parallel scalability of the application itself. This course will provide an introduction to understanding your research workflow, the place of HPC application performance within the workflow, an introduction to benchmarking parallel applications and how you can use benchmark data to make decisions on running your research on HPC systems.
The lesson aims to answer the following questions:
- How can I understand the end-to-end performance of my research workflow and, particularly, how does my use of HPC fit into this workflow?
- How do I measure parallel application performance and which metrics should I use and when?
- What decisions on my use of HPC can I make based on performance measurements?
Note: this course does not require any programming experience - it covers benchmarking HPC applications from the standpoint of running existing compiled applications and is suitable for users of HPC applications rather than developers. If you are an HPC software developer then you may find our advanced courses more suitable.
General Information
Where: This course will be taught online via Blackboard Collaborate. All attendees will be sent the joining link prior to the event.
When: 19 Apr 2021. Add to your Google Calendar.
Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below). They are also required to abide by the ARCHER2 Training Code of Conduct.
Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody.
Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop. If we can help making learning easier for you please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.
Contact: Please email support@archer2.ac.uk for more information.
Prerequisites
You should have used remote HPC facilities before. In particular, you should be happy with connecting using SSH, know what a batch scheduling system is and be familiar with using the Linux command line. You should also be happy editing plain text files in a remote terminal (or, alternatively, editing them on your local system and copying them to the remote HPC system using
scp).
Requirements
Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed in the Setup section below). They are also required to abide by the ARCHER2 Training Code of Conduct.
Note that this lesson uses The Carpentries template but this is not a Carpentries lesson.