Login to EPCC SAFE SAFE 

ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on February 28, 2024

Tags: newsletters 

ARCHER2 Capability Days

Webinar, Wednesday 28th February 2024 15:00 - 16:00

Thursday 14 March 2024 will be the first of the new ARCHER2 Capability Days.

Capability Days are periods on the ARCHER2 system where a large fraction of the system will be reserved for very large, capability jobs only which will run free of charge. For this purpose, capability jobs are defined as those that use 512 nodes or more. The aim of the Capability Days is to allow researchers to test and understand the performance of their applications at large scale.

This webinar will introduce how the Capability Days will work and how users can take advantage of the initiative.

This online session is open to all.

Full details and join link

ARCHER2 User Forum

Friday 8th March from 0900-1000 during the in-person Celebration of Science event.

The user forum will be a hybrid event so we will have the presenters in person via collaborate, some of the audience in person and also remote audience participants.

The format is:

  • 0900-0905 Welcome
  • 0905-0915 ARCHER2 GPU Update – James Richings
  • 0915-0925 ARCHER2 Capability Days – Kevin Stratford
  • 0925-0935 ARCHER2 Scratch and purge policy – Kieran Leach
  • 0935-0945 ARCHER2 Training – Juan Rodriguez Herrera
  • 0945-1000 Questions/Discussion

Full details and join link

GPU eCSE software development call

GPU eCSE call

The first call of a new programme of eCSE calls focussing on GPU-based software development is now open. We invite proposals to develop software that facilitates research targeted at UKRI’s digital research infrastructure e.g. future Exascale supercomputing services, UK national AI services, national Tier-2 HPC services. The call is open to research across all of UKRI’s remit.

The first GPU eCSE call (GPU-eCSE01) opened on the 17 Jan 2024. The final deadline for proposal submission is 16:00 on 19 Mar 2024 via the ARCHER2 SAFE. Please note that for this call there is no separate technical evaluation stage or separate technical evaluation form.

Funding will enable the employment of an RSE (a Research Software Engineer, PDRA or equivalent) to work specifically on the relevant software to enable new features or improve the performance of the software to be run on GPU-based architectures. Funding can be requested for up to 36 person months of effort per project for a duration of up to 2 calendar years. There is flexibility in the way the effort is requested. For example, a project may have more than one person working on it or the effort could be spread over a greater number of calendar months, i.e. a staff member could work on the project at less than 100% alongside other commitments or it could be worked on by a staff member who doesn’t work full time. Please just get in contact with the ARCHER2 Service Desk if you wish to discuss possible scenarios. Projects are expected to start between 2-6 months after a call closes. Funding can be requested for staff located at the institution of the PI, third parties, or can include staff from the ARCHER2 centralised CSE support team at EPCC or a mixture of the above.

Projects may utilise the GPU component of ARCHER2 or other suitable GPU resources to complete the technical work. If the proposal plans to use the GPU component of ARCHER2, successful projects will be given access to these resources. If projects plan to utilise other systems, you should ensure you have suitable resources available to complete the project successfully. Please contact and arrange this access with the relevant service provider before submission.

More details of how to apply are available by following the link to the eCSE calls page

Video of the recent webinar on the application process

eCSE call dates

Deadline for final GPU eCSE submission: 16:00 on 19 Mar 2024 (via the ARCHER2 SAFE)

ARCHER2 Celebration of Science

We are pleased to announce the ARCHER2 Celebration of Science will take place on the 7th – 8th March 2024 in Edinburgh at South Hall, The University of Edinburgh.

The event will provide ARCHER2 users with the opportunity to showcase their science achievements on ARCHER2. The two-day programme will include a variety of talks from members of the ARCHER2 research consortia and other invited presenters involved in the ARCHER2 service, a poster session and a panel session focusing on preparing the UK science community for future Exascale systems. All attendees are welcome to join the drink reception on the evening of the first day.

The event is in-person and there is no registration fee. The registration deadline is 29th February 2024.

Full details and registration:

ARCHER2 for Data Scientists

Online, 4 March 2024 10:00 - 17:30

This course covers the basics of ARCHER2 for data scientists. We will cover ARCHER2 hardware, software, and configurations, discuss how to install software and use containers on the system, and then look in more detail at how to ensure data science workflows are efficiently exploiting ARCHER2. We will cover both R and Python topics, looking at potential methods for parallelising data science workflows across the ARCHER2 hardware, and ensuring efficient use of the compute nodes ARCHER2 provides.

Further details and registration

Overview of the ARCHER2 GPU Development Platform

Online, 12 - 13 March 2024 09:00 - 17:00 and 09:00 - 15:30

This workshop will provide attendees with the knowledge required to understand how to port, execute and optimize applications for the ARCHER2 GPU Test and Development platform.

The workshop is a mixture of lectures and practical hands-on sessions. Example exercises will be provided but attendees are encouraged to bring their own application and a session is reserved where attendees can concentrate on their own applications.

Specific topics that will be covered include:

  • System Architecture.
  • Compiling and running applications on AMD GPUs (Programming Environment, compilers, scientific libraries, Slurm).
  • OpenACC and OpenMP offloading with the Cray PE.
  • GPU programming with HIP.
  • Application profiling and debugging on GPUs.

Further details and registration

Introduction to Modern Fortran

Durham, 3 - 4 April 2024 09:30 - 16:30 BST

Fortran (a contraction of Formula Translation) was the first programming langauge to have a standard (in 1954), but has changed significantly over the years. More recent standards (the latest being Fortran 2018) come under the umbrella term “Modern Fortran”. Fortran retains very great significance in many areas of scientific and numerical computing, particularly for applications such as quantum chemistry, plasmas, and in numerical weather prediction and climate models.

This course provides an introduction to the basics of writing Fortran. It will cover basic syntax, variables, expressions and assignments, flow of control, and introductions to i/o and user-defined types. Common Fortran idioms are introduced and contrasted with those available in C-like languages; the course will try to focus on real usage rather than formal descriptions.

Further details and registration

Intermediate Modern Fortran

Edinburgh, 10 - 11 April 2024 09:30 - 16:30

Fortran (a contraction of Formula Translation) was the first programming language to have a standard (in 1954), but has changed significantly over the years. More recent standards (the latest being Fortran 2018) come under the umbrella term “Modern Fortran”. Fortran retains very great significance in many areas of scientific and numerical computing, particularly for applications such as quantum chemistry, plasmas, engineering and fluid dynamics, and in numerical weather prediction and climate models.

This intermediate course concentrates on some of the more recent features which are central to Modern Fortran. Attendees should be familiar with the basics of Fortran programming

Further details and registration

Introduction to Xcompact3D

London, 15 April 2024 10:00 - 17:00

This course focused on Xcompact3d which is a Fortran-based framework of high-order finite-difference flow solvers dedicated to the study of turbulent flows. Dedicated to Direct and Large Eddy Simulations (DNS/LES) for which the largest turbulent scales are simulated, it can combine the versatility of industrial codes with the accuracy of spectral codes. Its user-friendliness, simplicity, versatility, accuracy, scalability, portability and efficiency makes it an attractive tool for the Computational Fluid Dynamics community. It is one of the four flagship solvers of the UK Turbulence Consortium. The course will run for 1 day comprising a mixture of lectures and tutorials.

Further 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.

  • When close to storage quota, jobs may slow down or produce corrupted files (Added: 2024-02-27) For situations where users are close to user or project quotas on work (Lustre) file systems we have seen cases of the following behaviour:
    • Jobs run very slowly as IO slows down
    • IO calls seem to complete successfully but not all data is written (so output is corrupted)
    • No “disk quota exceeded” error is seen

If you see these symptoms: slower than expected performance, data corruption; then you should check if you are close to your storage quota (either user or project quota). If you are, you may be experiencing this issue. Either remove data to free up space or request more storage quota.

Upcoming ARCHER2 Training

Further details of upcoming training

We always welcome researchers wishing to present their work in a webinar - please contact the Service Desk if you would be interested in presenting your work.

Twitter

Recordings of past courses

Recordings of past virtual tutorials