search

carpentries-incubator / hpc-intro

An Introduction to High Performance Computing
https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/hpc-intro/
Other
141 stars 140 forks source link

2021-02 review of lesson text, 12-cluster #300

Open mikerenfro opened 3 years ago

mikerenfro commented 3 years ago

Request for comment:

What is an HPC system?

  1. If we're going to emphasize internal cloud, probably should emphasize commercial cloud as well.
  2. "a multitude of" could be "many"?
  3. Do we need a mention of Top 500?
  4. To support what constraints? Talking about the need to handle large volumes of data and floating-point operations?
  5. Do we need a distinction between a cluster and a large-scale HPC? Cluster can also mean a VMware cluster, a Kubernetes cluster, etc. Is there a lower bound on performance or scale for what we'd call an HPC? NSF MRI award 2018575 is a $300k request for a CPU/GPU cluster ($428k including cost share), that probably takes up less than one full rack. Could we just use HPC throughout?

Logging in

  1. Define VPN? Does it even matter if we're using a laggy VPN, since much of the push for CLIs is their reduced overhead and lack of cross-platform GUI support without extra software like Open OnDemand, MobaXterm, or XQuartz?
  2. "The only leap" sentence could be something like "The main difference".
  3. "Go ahead and open" sentence ends oddly with ", University of Waterloo". Might be specific to the default snippets.

Where are we?

  1. Not sure the default snippets are right here. Prompt shows a hostname of 'gra-login1', but output shows "Graham".

Nodes

  1. Definition of nodes includes mention of terms we've already been using like "machines". Seems weird to me, but might be ok.
  2. Data Transfer Nodes instead of Dedicated Transfer Nodes?
  3. Missing scheduler name in "All interaction" sentence. Might be limited to default snippets.

What's in a node?

  1. Already mentioned CPUs and memory in 11-hpc-intro, maybe these definitions should be moved up there?
  2. In Explore Your Computer, could add screenshots of Windows Task Manager, macOS About This Mac, etc.
  3. In Explore Your Computer and Explore the Head Node, free -g instead of free -m for easier unit conversion? Maybe not, since sinfo -m will return in megabytes.
Sabryr commented 3 years ago

Regarding the Dedicated Transfer Nodes callout , shall we move it to a snippet, where site specific node configurations can be included.

amfage commented 3 years ago

I'm looking through the lessons as part of my Carpentries Instructor Checkout. I see there is a reference to "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood", which may not be a reference that readers outside the US will get.