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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on March 18, 2026

Tags: newsletters 

ARCHER2 User Forum

Hybrid session as part of the Celebration of Science, Friday 20th March 09:00-10:00 All welcome

EPCC Staff will present information about the ARCHER2 service.

It will also give you an opportunity to ask any questions to EPCC staff.

This online session is open to all.

Full details and online join link

Fortran Unit Testing Tools

Free webinar, Wednesday 18th March 2026 15:00 - 16:00

This webinar will describe two unit testing frameworks that target Fortran applications. The longstanding pFUnit and more recent Fortuno frameworks.

Full details and join link

Reproducible computational environments using containers: introduction to Docker and Singularity

Online 23 - 24 March 2026 10:00 - 16:00

This course aims to introduce the use of containers with the goal of using them to effect reproducible computational environments. Such environments are useful for ensuring reproducible research outputs and for simplifying the setup of complex software dependencies across different systems. The course will introduce the use of Docker and Singularity containers but the material will be of use for whatever container technology you plan to, or end up, using. On completion of this course attendees should:

  • Have an understanding of what Docker/Singularity containers are, why they are useful and the common terminology used
  • Have a working Docker installation on your local system to allow you to use containers
  • Understand how to use existing Docker containers for common tasks
  • Be able to build your own Docker/Singularity containers by understanding both the role of a Dockerfile/Singularity recipe in building containers, and the syntax used in Dockerfiles/Singularity recipes
  • Understand how to manage Docker/Singularity containers on your local system
  • Appreciate decisions that need to be made around containerising research workflows
  • Understand the differences between Docker and Singularity containers and why Singularity is more suitable for multi-user systems (e.g. HPC)
  • Appreciate issues around reproducibility in software, understand how containers can address some of these issues and what the limits to reproducibility using containers are

Full details and registration

Intermediate Research Software Development

University of Manchester, 13 April 2026 13.30-17.00, 14 - 16 April 2026 09:30 - 17:00 (Rescheduled)

This course aims to teach a core set of established, intermediate-level software development skills and best practices for working as part of a team in a research environment using Python as an example programming language (see detailed Learning objectives below). The core set of skills we teach is not a comprehensive set of all-encompassing skills, but a selective set of tried-and-tested collaborative development skills that forms a firm foundation for continuing on your learning journey.

A typical learner for this course may be someone who is working in a research environment, needing to write some code, has gained basic software development skills either by self-learning or attending, e.g., a novice Software Carpentry Python course. They have been applying those skills in their domain of work by writing code for some time, e.g. half a year or more. However, their software development-related projects are now becoming larger and are involving more researchers and other stakeholders (e.g. users), for example:

Software is becoming more complex and more collaborative development effort is needed to keep the software running Software is going further than just the small group developing and/or using the code there are more users and an increasing need to add new features ‘Technical debt’ is increasing with demands to add new functionality while ensuring previous development efforts remain functional and maintainable

They now need intermediate software engineering skills to help them design more robust software code that goes beyond a few thrown-together proof-of-concept scripts, taking into consideration the lifecycle of software, writing software for stakeholders, team ethic and applying a process to understanding, designing, building, releasing, and maintaining software.

Full details and registration

Profiling and Optimisation Workshop

Online 14th - 15th April 2026 09:00 - 17:00

This 2-day advanced level on-line course will give attendees the skills needed to understand the system architecture of platforms such as ARCHER2 and the new Cirrus system, the programming environment and furthermore explains how application performance can be explored by means of profiling tools and which optimisation strategies are available. The course comprises lectures, examples and follow-along demos. It covers both CPU and GPU usage.

Full details and registration

Modern C++ for Computational Scientists

Online 15 - 17 April 2026 09:30 - 16:30

With the recent revisions to the C++ language and standard library, the ways it is now being used are quite different. Used well, these features enable the programmer to write elegant, reusable and portable code that runs efficiently on a variety of architectures.

However it is still a very large and complex tool. This course will cover a minimal set of features to allow an experienced non-C++ programmer to get to grips with language.

These include:

  • overloading
  • templates
  • containers
  • iterators
  • lambdas
  • standard algorithms

We will also briefly cover some important libraries for numerical computing.

Full details and registration

Message Passing programming with MPI

Imperial College London, Wednesday 22nd - Thursday 23rd Apil 10:00 - 17:00 (In Person); Friday 1st May 10:00 - 12:30 (online)

The world’s largest supercomputers are used almost exclusively to run applications which are parallelised using Message Passing. The course covers all the basic knowledge required to write parallel programs using this programming model, and is directly applicable to almost every parallel computer architecture.

Parallel programming by definition involves co-operation between processors to solve a common task. The programmer has to define the tasks that will be executed by the processors, and also how these tasks are to synchronise and exchange data with one another. In the message-passing model the tasks are separate processes that communicate and synchronise by explicitly sending each other messages. All these parallel operations are performed via calls to some message-passing interface that is entirely responsible for interfacing with the physical communication network linking the actual processors together. This course uses the de facto standard for message passing, the Message Passing Interface (MPI). It covers point-to-point communication, non-blocking operations, derived datatypes, virtual topologies, collective communication and general design issues.

Full details and registration

Workflows

Online, 27 - 28 April 2026 10:00 - 12:00

his short seminar provides an introduction to modern scientific workflows and hands-on practice with two workflow systems. Over two half-days (4 hours each), attendees will:

Day 1

Understand the role and purpose of scientific workflows, including how and why they are used to structure and automate complex data-processing pipelines. Modules include an introduction to workflow concepts and an extended practical session creating workflows with Common Workflow Language (CWL), including exercises in a Google Colab Jupyter Notebooks to install and run CWL workflows.

Day 2

Explore dispel4py, a Python-based streaming workflow framework. Participants will work through basic and advanced concepts, build simple examples, and complete hands-on exercises using dispel4py in Google Colab Jupyter Notebooks, including some real-use cases drawn from scientific applications.

Prerequisites

Attendees should be comfortable with basic Python programming concepts and familiar with using Jupyter notebooks or Google Colab; no prior experience in workflow languages is required.

Learning objectives

By the end of the course attendees will be able to describe workflow concepts and systems, write and run basic CWL workflows in a notebook environment, and develop and test simple dispel4py workflows for streaming data processing.

Full details and registration

ARCHER2 Celebration of Science 2026

We are pleased to announce that ARCHER2 Celebration of Science 2026 will take place on the 19th - 20th March 2026 in Edinburgh at South Hall, The University of Edinburgh.

The event is in-person and there is no registration fee.

What to expect at ARCHER2 Celebration of Science

ARCHER2 Celebration of Science is annual event that brings together the ARCHER2 user community to celebrate their scientific achievements on ARCHER2. You can explore the highlights of previous events here and view the science showcased in the previous years.

The two-day programme of ARCHER2 Celebration of Science 2026 will include:

  • Invited talks: a variety of talks from the invited speakers highlighting their impactful research using ARCHER2.
  • Poster programme: a platform for the ARCHER2 community to present and discuss their successes delivered on ARCHER2 through the lightning talks and the poster session. A Best Poster Prize will be awarded.
  • Keynote: the keynote will be given by Professor Mark Parsons, Director of EPCC.
  • Panel Session: focuses on key topics for the ARCHER2 and UK research community.
  • ARCHER2 User Forum: learn about the latest service updates and engage directly with the ARCHER2 team. - The User Forum will be a hybrid session - the link to join remotely can be found on the agenda page
  • Diversity Session: an interactive session to discuss the equality, diversity and inclusion challenges related to the delivery of HPC services.

Full details here

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

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.

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Recordings of past courses

Recordings of past virtual tutorials