reid-a
commented
3 years ago DRAFT: Sc21 BOF proposal
Title: HPC Carpentry: Introducing New Users to HPC
Session Leaders
- Andrew Reid
- Trevor Keller
- Others?
It's possible ot include a brief bio for these.
Topic Area
- Education
Abstract:
HPC Carpentry is a community and a set of lessons for introducing new users to cluster-based high-performance computing resources. As these resources become more common, the need for educational resources to bring users from a broad variety of technical backgrounds up to speed becomes more urgent. Based on the pedagigically sound methods of the larger Carpentries method, lessons in active development include an introduction to the use of a queuing system, an introduction to parallel programming in Python, and a lesson focusing on the Chapel parallel langauge. The introductory lesson is part of the Carpentries incubator program, and is on track to be incorporated in to the Carpentries as a regular lesson in the near future.
Long description:
Who we are
The HPC Carpentry community, a volunteer group of high-performance computing practitioners lead by a steering committee, has developed a number of introductory lessons for new users of HPC clusters.
What Problem We Solve
It is almost a cliche at this point that greater and greater computational capabilities are becoming increasingly affordable. An under-appreciated consequence of this is that the range\ of backgrounds of new users of these resources is increasingly broad, and may not include knowledge of computer system configurations and file system layouts. There is an evident on-going need to address the gap between the needs of these users and the capabilities and opportunities presented by the available HPC resources.
The HPC Carpentry lessons address this gap, building on the pedagogically sound instructional methods of the larger Carpentries community to develop several lessons. The best-developed of these, the HPC Intro lesson, was recently submitted to the Carpentries Incubator program, and is on track to become an official Carpentries lesson. Other important lessons in development include a parallel python lesson, and a lesson focusing on the chapel langauge.
Goals for the BoF
During this BoF, we will gather community feedback on our progress to date, to ensure that we are aligned with current HPC best practices, and to help the HPC Carpentries development team prioritize efforts for successor lessons in light of the changing landscape of current HPC practice.
MPI remains a very popular parallel framework, but the community of novice HPC users may be using codes for which the MPI details are hidden, or which use entirely different parallel frameworks. What is the right level of detail to address parallel frameworks in the introductory and advanced levels?
There are many languages in which parallel and HPC codes are written, including legacy Fortran codes, low-level C and C++ codes, and newer HPC codes written in Python, Julia, or other parallel languages. How can we provide relevant information across these communities, while retaining pedagogical rigor?
Interactivity
Approximately 2/3 to 3/4 of the session will be interactive.
Format of the non-audience-participation portion
Presentations by the session leaders, either with slides or walking through a lesson.
Commerical?
No.
Format
The BoF will open with a presentation of the current state of the lessons, including "pain points" identified by the develpoment team, after which an open discussion will be held to solicit feedback on theese points, and the questions above, from the attendees.
Prior BoFs?
An HPC Carpentry BoF was held at SC17, and an informal group of about fifteen participants got together at SC18.
Time, expected attendance, keywords
- We expect the session will last 2.5 to 3 hours.
- We expect around 20 participants.
- Carpentries, carpentry, education, new users
tkphd
Apologies for getting to the issue thing late, the Codi link for the July coordination meeting is now up. Agenda feedback is welcome!