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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on October 26, 2022

Tags: newsletters 

Debugging on ARCHER2:
Introduction to the gdb4hpc and ccdb debugging tools on ARCHER2.

Free online webinar, Wednesday 2nd November 2022 15:00 - 16:00 BST
Harvey Richardson, Douglas Shanks HPE Cray

This webinar, delivered by the HPE Centre of Excellence, will be an introduction to the gdb4hpc and ccdb debugging that are provided in the HPE Cray Programming Environment on ARCHER2.

The webinar aims to answer the following questions:

  • What debugging tools are available on ARCHER2?
  • What is gdb?
  • How do I use gdb and what are its capabilities?
  • What does gdb4hpc add to gdb?
  • How do I use gdb4hpc on ARCHER2?
  • How would I debug a hanging/crashing application with gdb4hpc?
  • What is the Cray Comparative Debugger (ccdb)?
  • When and how would I use ccdb?
  • How would I create an assertion script and compare two programs with ccdb?

Details and join link

ARCHER2 solid state storage - trial access for users

The ARCHER2 solid state storage is now in a state where we can offer trial access to ARCHER2 users. To determine the level of interest and assign resources we have created this short survey for users to complete if they are interested in testing the solid state storage on ARCHER2. Testing by the ARCHER2 CSE team at EPCC has shown that you may see I/O performance improvements from the solid state storage compared to the standard Lustre file systems on ARCHER2 if your I/O model has the following characteristics or similar:

  • You read/write lots of files in parallel (e.g. your software uses a file-per-process model or similar)
  • You use the ADIOS 2 I/O system

Note: if you use MPI-IO approaches to reading/writing data - this includes parallel HDF5 and parallel NetCDF - then you very unlikely to see any performance improvements from using the solid state storage over the standard parallel Lustre file systems on ARCHER2.

Complete the survey:

The deadline for completing the survey is 1600 GMT, Wed 9 Nov 2022. Although we will do our best to meet all requests for trial access, we cannot guarantee that all requests for trial access will be able to be met.

ARCHER2 for Package Users

Online 24 November 2022 10:00 - 16:00 GMT

This lesson provides an introduction to using ARCHER2 for users who:

  • have already used other HPC systems; and
  • want to use pre-installed simulation/modelling packages rather than compiling their own.

The lesson aims to answer the following questions:

  • What hardware is available on ARCHER2?
  • What does it consist of (login nodes, compute nodes, file systems, backup)?
  • How does this impact me as a user?
  • How can I access ARCHER2 interactively and transfer data?
  • What does the ARCHER2 software environment look like and how do I access software?
  • How do I write job submission scripts and submit them to the ARCHER2 scheduler?
  • How can I be a good ARCHER2 citizen?
  • How can I check what resources I am using and look at historical usage?
  • What are the next steps for me using ARCHER2 and how can I get more help?

Full details and registration

ARCHER2 for Software Developers

Online, 2 & 5 December 2022 10:00 - 16:00 GMT

The lesson aims to answer the following questions:

  • What hardware is available on ARCHER2?
  • What does they consist of (login nodes, compute nodes, file systems, backup)?
  • How does this impact me as a user?
  • How can I access ARCHER2 interactively and transfer data?
  • What does the ARCHER2 application development environment look like and how do I use it?
  • How do I write job submission scripts and submit them to the ARCHER2 scheduler?
  • How can I be a good ARCHER2 citizen?
  • How can I check what resources I am using and look at historical usage?

Target Audience:

This lesson provides an introduction to using ARCHER2 for user who:

  • have already used other HPC systems; and
  • want to compile (and possibly) develop HPC software on ARCHER2.

Full details and registration

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
  • ARCHER2 for Package Users, Online, 24 November 2022 10:00 - 16:00 GMT
  • Advanced OpenMP, Online, 29 - 30 November 2022 09:00 - 17:00 GMT
  • ARCHER2 for Software Developers, Online, 2 & 5 December 2022 10:00 - 16:00 GMT

Further details of upcoming training

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Recordings of past courses and virtual tutorials