Towards a European Training Network in Scientific Computing

Pekka Manninen, PhDCSC – IT Center for Science Ltd

Prologue

SUPERCOMPUTERS!

Prologue

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Outline

Supercomputing education & training: challengesEuropan supercomputing: the PRACE projectTraining & education initiatives within PRACE– Face-to-face learning programme– Online Training Portal– PRACE Advanced Training Centres

Utilizing supercomputers is difficult

A supercomputing application has to employ 1,000-100,000 processors at the same time: massive parallelism– Programming these machines is much more difficult than

that of a laptopScientists that employ the machines are (usually) not computer scientists: – Interdisciplinary user community– Lack of programming skills

Training & education & user support: as important for a fully functional supercomputing ecosystem as the machines themselves

PRACE in a nutshell

Provide world-class supercomputer systems for world-class science– Deploy systems of the highest performance level

(Tier-0) with ensuring diversity of architecturesCreate a permanent research infrastructure through a single European legal entityProvide the full ecosystem for the PRACE systems– Application enabling, user support– Grid access– HPC training network

Challenges for PRACE training activities

PRACE comprises of 23 countries– Large geographical distances– Large differences in users’ skills and training needs

Great variety of skills that need to be transferredInterdisciplinary audience from all levels

PRACE training activities

Seasonal Schools & Workshops in HPC all around Europe– 9 seasonal schools, 7 workshops so far– Almost 700 reserachers trained, great impact in European

HPC know-howPRACE Training PortalPRACE Advanced Training Centers– Local resource centers for HPC training & education

Training surveys

PRACE has conducted two landscape analysis on HPC training & education needs in EuropePronounced demand for HPC skills transfer in all levels from basic to advanced– The results are utilized in planning of PRACE trainings

Both of these reports are publicly available at www.prace-ri.eu/Public-Deliverables

www.prace-ri.eu/training

Slides & lecture recordings from all PRACE f2f training

events: 100 hours of lecture videos

www.prace-ri.eu/training

PRACE Advanced Training Centres

Mandate“The PRACE Advanced Training Centres will serve as

European hubs of advanced, world-class training for researchers working in the computational sciences.”

Vision“When all centres are functional, the PATC network is a

visible and important part of the electronic research infrastructure in Europe.”

Six centers for 2012-2014– Finland (CSC), France (MdS/GENCI), Germany (GSC), Italy

(CINECA), Spain (BSC), UK (EPCC)

Training collaboration

”EU-U.S. Summer Schools on HPC Challenges in Computational Science” organized jointly together with the U.S. XSEDE e-Infrastructure– 2010 in Italy, 2011 in California, 2012 in Ireland

Exploring collaboration possibilities with other nations as well– China, Japan and Canada likely to join the organization of

2013 EU-U.S. summer schools

Summary

Supercomputing: the no-nonsense path to progressPRACE is building a permanent, pan-European research infrastructure for high-end scientific computing– An elaborate training programme is paramount for the

success of the infrastructurePRACE training activities– Face-to-face events: Workshops and Seasonal Schools– Training Portal– PRACE Advanced Training Centers

For more information, see www.prace-ri.euwww.prace-ri.eu/training