Welcome      Program and Agenda      List of Participants      Photos

Spring School in Advanced Computing TACC @ UP

2009 May 28-29

Dep. Ciência de Computadores
Faculdade de Ciências
Universidade do Porto
Porto, Portugal

Course Description

The main theme of this workshop will be Advanced Parallel Programming and Visualization on Ranger and Spur. TACC instructors will present various advanced topics covering the architecture and proper use of computational and visualization resources, with emphasis on the Sun Constellation Linux Cluster RANGER and the Sun Visualization Cluster SPUR. The class will be of particular interest to computational scientists who are developing code for large clusters and/or porting code to large clusters. The class will provide a foundation for:

Labs will provide the opportunity for gaining hands-on experience on Ranger and Spur.

This class will be most suitable for users with experience with UNIX or Linux computer systems, experience with programming, and some basic experience with parallel techniques (familiarity with basic MPI programming).

Requirements

Participants will have access to RANGER and SPUR at TACC. Linux- Mac- or Windows-based laptops will be needed. To provide full functionality the laptops need to be able to open a secure shell (ssh) with X-forwarding. For the visualization labs a VNC server is needed to allow access to the SPUR desktop and to reduce network traffic. In case that the transatlantic connectivity is bad, provisions for a backup solution have to be made. Two open-source utilities (ParaView and Vislt) will allow to process files, created on SPUR (and copied to the local machines), directly on the laptops. It is advantageous to have the software installed before the training begins.

Useful sites:

Instructors

Dan Stanzione
Dan Stanzione is the Deputy Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and is pleased to be returning to Portugal after teaching at the Summer School in Advanced Computing in 2008 in Coimbra. Dr. Stanzione's research currently focuses on techniques for very large scale debugging of applications on supercomputers, and the construction of cyberinfrastructure to problems in plant biology. Prior to joining TACC, he held positions in advanced computing at Arizona State University and Clemson University, and was Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC.

Lars Koesterke
Lars Koesterke joined TACC in the fall of 2007. He is a member of the High Performance Computing (HPC) group, with emphasis on Performance, Evaluation and Optimization of parallel programs. His work focuses on serial optimization, parallel computing (OpenMP and MPI) and Fortran. His background is in Astrophysics (Ph.D. in 1993, Kiel, Germany). Prior to joining TACC he held positions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and at several Universities in the U.S. and in Germany.

Paul Navrátil
Paul Navrátil is a Visualization Scientist in the Visualization and Data Analysis (VDA) group at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. He currently works on algorithms, applications, and system design for large-scale visualization. In addition, Paul is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he focuses on system-aware optimizations for ray tracing. Prior to joining TACC, Paul held positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory and at Intel Corporation.

Agenda

Thursday, May 28

Hour Topic Instructor(s)
09:00 Welcome and Advanced MPI & MPI I/O (slides) Dan
10:00 Coffee Break
10:30 Lab - Advanced MPI (slides) All
11:30 Hybrid Computing (OpenMP and MPI) (slides) Lars
12:30 Lunch at Círculo Universitário
14:00 Incorporating Parallel Libraries in Your Application (slides) Lars
15:00 Advanced Visualization Techniques (slides) Paul
16:00 Coffee Break
16:30 Lab - Advanced Visualization (slides) All
18:00 Adjourn

Friday, May 29

Hour Topic Instructor(s)
09:00 Profiling and Tuning (mpiP and TAU) (slides) Lars
10:00 Lab - Profiling (slides) All
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Debugging of Parallel Program (slides) Lars
12:30 Lab - Debugging (slides) All
13:00 Lunch at Círculo Universitário
14:00 Clouds (Part I) (slides) Dan
15:00 Clouds (Part II) (cont. slides above) Dan
16:00 Coffee Break
16:30 Dicussion of Possible Future Collaborations All
18:00 Adjourn