ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter


New HPE Cray Programming Environment (CPE) 22.04 available

A new version (22.04) of the HPE Cray Programming Environment (CPE) is now available on ARCHER2. CPE 22.04 provides updated versions of compilers (CCE, GCC, AOCC, MPI, software libraries (e.g. FFTW, NetCDF) and tools (e.g. CrayPAT, Python).

The older CPE 21.04 remains the default environment on ARCHER2, so users who wish to make use of the new versions should follow the instructions in the ARCHER2 User and Best Practice Guide to enable CPE 22.04 at compile time and runtime. In particular, see:

which show how to modify your environment at compile time and runtime to use the new versions of compilers and libraries.

If you have any questions or run into issues with the new CPE 22.04, please contact the ARCHER2 Service Desk.

A summary of the versions of compilers, MPI and LibSci available in CPE 22.04:

  • CCE: 13.0.2
  • GCC: 11.2.0
  • AOCC: 3.2.0
  • HPE Cray MPICH; 8.1.15
  • HPE Cray LibSci: 21.08.1.2

Advanced Message-Passing Programming

Online training, 29 - 30 June 2022 09:30 - 17:00 GMT

This course is aimed at programmers seeking to deepen their understanding of MPI and explore some of its more recent and advanced features. We cover topics including exploiting shared-memory access from MPI programs, communicator management and neighbourhood collectives. We also look at performance aspects such as which MPI routines to use for scalability, MPI internal implementation issues and overlapping communication and calculation. Intended learning outcomes

  • Understanding of how internal MPI implementation details affect performance
  • Techniques for overlapping communications and calculation
  • Knowledge of MPI memory models for RMA operations
  • Understanding of best practice for MPI+OpenMP programming
  • Familiarity with neighbourhood collective operations in MPI

Full details and registration: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220629-advanced-mpi/

Data Carpentry

Online training, 18 - 21 July 2022 09:30 - 13:00 BST

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners’ existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

The workshop will cover:

  • Data Organization in Spreadsheets. OpenRefine for Data Cleaning.
  • Introduction to R.
  • Continuation of R: Data analysis and Visualization.
  • Data Management with SQL.

Full details and registration: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220718-data-carpentry/

ARCHER2 Annual User Survey 2021-22

We are committed to continually improving the ARCHER2 Service and would like to request your input to help us understand what is important to you, where the Service is working well and where there is scope for improvement.

The ARCHER2 Annual User Survey consists of just a few questions and should take only a few minutes of your time to complete. There are opportunities to add more detailed comments if you wish.

For each survey response received, we will donate £1 to Save The Children.

We are also offering 5 prizes of 2000 CUs on ARCHER2 for users who complete the survey. Winners can choose to forgo the CU prize and for each winner that does this we will donate a further £20 to Save The Children. Winners will be drawn at random from all respondents who have left contact details after the closing date of Thursday 30th June 2022 and the winners notified by e-mail. The prizes are only available to people with existing ARCHER2 user accounts.

You can find the survey at:

https://bit.ly/ARCHER2-User-Survey-2021-2022

Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. The responses will be used to try and improve the service for you and to help identify key areas for service development.

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

  • Advanced Message-Passing Programming, Online, 29 - 30 June 2022 09:30 - 17:00 GMT
  • Data Carpentry, Online, 18 - 21 July 2022 09:30 - 13:00 BST
  • Plotting and Programming with Python, Online, 25 July 2022 10:00 - 17:00 BST
  • HPC Carpentry, Online, 26 - 27 July 2022 09:30 - 16:00 BST
  • Performance of different routing protocols on ARCHER2: OpenFabrics and UCX, Online, Wednesday 20th July 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST (Note change of date)

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/