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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on May 6, 2026

Tags: newsletters 

ARCHER2 User Survey 2026

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 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. Additionally, if you enter your ARCHER2 username in the final question, then you will be entered into the prize draw to win one of five £50 Amazon vouchers.

Complete the survey

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, and will be shared with UKRI for consideration in planning future services.

ARCHER2 Capability Days: 12-14 May 2026

The fifth ARCHER2 Capability Days session will run from 12-14 May 2026. ARCHER2 Capability Days are a mechanism to allow users to run large scale tests on the system free of charge. The motivations behind Capability Days are:

  • Enhancing world-leading science from ARCHER2 by enabling modelling and simulation at scales that are not otherwise possible.
  • Enabling capability use cases that are not possible on other UK HPC services.
  • Providing a facility that can be used to test scaling to help prepare software and communities for future large-scale resources.

Capability Days are made up of two parts:

  • 0900-1900 BST, 12 May 2026 - pre-Capability Days session (“pre-capabilityday” QoS) to allow users to test scaling and job setup ahead of full Capability Day
    • Supports jobs 256-1024 nodes, 1 hour maximum run time
    • Jobs are uncharged
  • 0800 BST, 13 May - 1400 BST, 14 May 2026 - Capability Days session (“capabilityday” QoS)
    • Supports jobs 512-4096 nodes, 2 hours maximum run time
    • Jobs are uncharged

More information on Capability Days and how to submit jobs can be found on the ARCHER2 documentation

Shaken, not stirred! Influence of external vibration on phase change

Free webinar, Wednesday 13th May 2026 15:00 - 16:00

Phase change, water turning to vapour or ice, often begins with a rare “first event”: the birth of a tiny bubble or an ice embryo. In real technologies (from ultrasonic cleaning to cryopreservation and ice mitigation), we try to trigger or suppress these first events on demand, yet the decisive physics typically happens in a nanometre-thin layer next to a surface, where experiments struggle to see clearly. By combining nanoscale physical modelling with large-scale simulations performed on HPC like ARCHER2, it becomes possible to resolve these transient events with statistical reliability and to interrogate how external forcing reshapes interfacial phase behaviour.

The talk will demonstrate how high-frequency surface vibrations can serve as a practical “knob” for controlling phase change by reshaping the local pressure–temperature landscape at the solid–liquid interface. It will also present our emerging research on acoustothermal de-icing and anti-icing, where the same vibration-controlled interfacial physics may be harnessed not only to manage when ice forms, but also to influence how strongly it adheres, opening routes to active, on-demand ice mitigation on engineered surfaces

Full details and join link

GPU programming with kernels

This three-day course will provide an introduction to GPU computing with HIP aimed at scientific application programmers wishing to develop their own software. The course will give a background on the difference between CPU and GPU architectures as a prelude to introductory exercises in HIP programming. The course will discuss the execution of kernels, memory management, among other topics.

The course will not discuss programming with compiler directives, but does provide a concrete basis of understanding of the underlying principles of the HIP model which is useful for programmers ultimately wishing to make use of OpenMP or OpenACC. The course will not consider graphics programming, nor will it consider machine learning packages.

Note that the course is also appropriate for those wishing to use NVIDIA GPUs via the CUDA API, although we will not specifically use CUDA.

Full details and registration

Webinar: EuroHPC Access Calls

Wednesday 13 May 2026, 9:00 - 11:30 (BST)

Join us for a webinar, co-organised with the User Forum and, designed to guide participants through the full lifecycle of applying for EuroHPC Access Calls.

EuroHPC Access Calls provide HPC users and developers from both public and private institutions the opportunity to apply for supercomputing resources across all EuroHPC JU machines. These calls are highly competitive and require a strong combination of scientific excellence and technical readiness.

Talks will focus on:

  • proposal preparation
  • scientific and technical evaluation
  • benchmarking
  • successful project execution

Each talk is led by experts from leading European HPC organisations who will provide practical guidance on the structure of the EuroHPC Access Calls, sharing insights from real-world experiences of successful applicants.

Registration is required

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