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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on July 20, 2022

Tags: newsletters 

Performance of different routing protocols on ARCHER2: OpenFabrics and UCX,

Online webinar, Wednesday 20th July 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST

In this presentation, we report on a comparison on performance between different routing protocols underlying the Cray MPICH library on a HPE Cray EX system for a variety of application and synthetic benchmarks. The ARCHER2 system allows users to select, at runtime, between two different underlying routing protocols: OpenFabrics (OFI) and Mellanox UCX (UCX). The CSE team have compared the performance of OFI and UCX for different applications from a variety of research areas (CASTEP, CP2K, GROMACS, NEMO, OpenSBLI, VASP) and the performance of the OSU MPI benchmarks. We find that the choice of routing protocol can have a profound effect on application performance and that the best choice is dependent on the number of nodes, the application and the benchmark case used for the performance evaluation. This makes providing general advice to users challenging. We summarise the data we have gathered so far and the advice we provide to users; and provide an overview of what future investigations we have planned.

Full details and join link: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220720-routing-protocols-vt/

Plotting and Programming with Python

Online training, 25 July 2022 10:00 - 17:00 BST

This lesson is an introduction to programming in Python for people with little or no previous programming experience. It uses plotting as its motivating example. Please note that this lesson uses Python 3.

This one-day course aims to answer the following questions:

How do I…

  • …read tabular data?
  • …plot a single vector of values?
  • …create a time series plot?
  • …create one plot for each of several data sets?
  • …get extra data from a single data set for plotting?
  • …write programs I can read and re-use in future?

Full details and registration: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/#upcoming-training

HPC Carpentry

Online, 26 - 27 July 2022 09:30 - 16:00 BST

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 and registration: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/#upcoming-training

Access to HPC Call

Access to HPC Call (EPSRC remit only) opened 4th July.
ARCHER2 or Tier-2 computing resource for a maximum duration of one year and a minimum of 4000 CU.
TA Deadline - 20th September 16:00
Submit Deadline - 18th October 16:00
More details an application forms https://www.archer2.ac.uk/support-access/access#calls-for-archer2-time-only

Recently added Known Issues

The “Known Issues” page of the ARCHER2 Documentation https://docs.archer2.ac.uk/known-issues/ lists all current open known issues including a description of the issue, its symptoms and any work-arounds.

  • No recent issues

Upcoming ARCHER2 Training

  • Message-passing Programming with MPI, Online, always-open self-service course
  • Shared Memory Programming with OpenMP, Online, always-open self-service course
  • QM/MM with GROMACS + CP2K, Online, Always open - self-service course

  • Performance of different routing protocols on ARCHER2: OpenFabrics and UCX, Online, Wednesday 20th July 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST (Note change of date)
  • Plotting and Programming with Python, Online, 25 July 2022 10:00 - 17:00 BST
  • Reproducible computational environments using containers, Imperial College London, 26 - 27 July 2022 10:00 - 16:00 BST
  • HPC Carpentry, Online, 26 - 27 July 2022 09:30 - 16:00 BST
  • Performance of MPI+OpenMP on ARCHER2, Online webinar, Wednesday 27th July 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST
  • Goal-oriented mesh adaptation for Firedrake, Online webinar, Thursday 28th July 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST
  • Debugging and Optimizing Parallel Codes with Arm Forge - Debugging and DDT, Online webinar, Wednesday 31st August 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST
  • Debugging and Optimizing Parallel Codes with Arm Forge - Performance optimization, MAP, and PR, Online webinar, Wednesday 7th September 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST

Further details https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/#upcoming-training

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ARCHER2_HPC

Recordings of past courses and virtual tutorials can be found here: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/materials/