Spring Research Computing Bootcamp starts April 26
Spring Research Computing Bootcamp starts April 26th! Popular Python, HPC, and Cloud workshops are back. All spring workshops will be held online and there is no cost to attend.
Are you unable to attend a workshop date but are interested in research computing resources? Check out our Research Computing page to see our list of services and to access video recordings from past bootcamps.
Spring 2021 Research Computing Bootcamp Schedule
See something you like? Register below! These workshops often have waitlists for registration, so don't delay. Please only sign up for a bootcamp if you are confident you can attend. If you're unable to attend a workshop after registering, please let us know at istcomms@ualberta.ca so we can provide the spot to another registrant.
HPC: Shell Basics
Date: Monday, April 26
Time: 1pm - 4:30pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
This 3.5-hour workshop will introduce you to the basic interface for using a High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment: the Linux Shell, a command line environment. You will learn how to login to a remote HPC machine and perform common common tasks, including moving through directories, viewing files, and moving files on and off the system. This is a version of the face-to-face workshop that we run regularly that has been truncated slightly to account for some inefficiencies of the online environment. Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Scripting Basics
Date: Wednesday, April 28
Time: 1pm - 3pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
In this 2 hour, direct follow-up to HPC:Shell we will spend additional time looking at writing scripts within the Linux Shell as part of automating tasks. You will learn more about writing and using scripts to get your work done, including how to write loops, and how to generalize your scripts by allowing them to take inputs directly from the command line. This workshop will not cover the mechanics of submitting work to the HPC Clusters via scripts but is instead an optional preparatory workshop for HPC: Essentials, which covers this. Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Essentials
Date: Friday, April 30
Time: 1pm - 4pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
This is the third workshop in the series designed to move researchers from no previous experience using high performance computing (HPC) clusters towards a position of confidence and competence. This workshop focuses on the mechanics of submitting programs (aka “jobs”) to the clusters so that they can be scheduled and run. Led by Kamil Marcinkowski, scheduling team lead for Compute Canada, this workshop will contain extra emphasis on interacting with the scheduler to ensure that your work is getting done rather than sitting in the queue. This workshop provides that background in a friendly, jargon-minimized, hands-on environment.
HPC: Cluster / UNIX Tools
Date: Monday, May 3
Time: 1pm - 4pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
This is the forth workshop in the series designed to move researchers from no previous experience using high performance computing (HPC) clusters towards a position of confidence and competence. This session will teach you how to run and control programs understand what is happening, and diagnose some problems on Unix/Linux systems. High performance computing (HPC) clusters are composed Linux machines, understanding and controlling work on a cluster is extension of the skills in doing the same on a Linux machine. You will learn how to tell how much memory, how many open files, how much disk IO, Iops, network traffic does a program use. How to tell much resources exist on a computer and how busy it is currently and which program are using these resources. We will then extend the same tools and techniques for jobs running on a cluster.
HPC: Parallelism
Date: Wednesday, May 5
Time: 1pm - 2:30pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Are you having a hard time understanding parallel computing and High Performance Computing (HPC)? Specially, all the terms such as: thread, process, job,vector processor, core, CUDA, MPI, and many more. This session will provide you with a map to understand parallel computing, a description of the terms and concepts and how they relate to each other. Like any good map, it will let you know which concepts and terms you need to know in greater detail, and how they relate to what you are trying to do. With this map in hand you will be in a better position to decide when and how to take advantage of the parallel computing architectures that are available to you.
HPC: Scheduling
Date: Monday, May 10; Wednesday, May 12; Friday, May 14
Time: 1pm - 4pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Your research has gone beyond the capabilities of your laptop, and you're now getting started with the cluster. Unlike your home computer, where you are the only user on the system, the cluster uses a piece of software called a "scheduler" to decide when the work you submit gets processed. You've done some work with the scheduler but feel that there is more to be understood in order to get more work done. Now what? This intermediate course will teach the skills to be productive and effective. You should be comfortable using the UNIX command line and have already submitted your first jobs to the cluster before you attend this session. The knowledge and skills learned in the earlier Bootcamp sessions HPC: Shell, HPC: Essentials and Parallelism will be built upon. Importantly, using a cluster for software development can be very slow without knowing a few simple tricks, we will teach you these. You should be able to do software development as fast as you can on your laptop via interactive use of the cluster will also greatly facilitate tuning and debugging.
We will cover the following topics and more:
- What do you do when things go wrong, what happens when your job fails and how to fix it.
- How do you figure out what resources your job's needs on the cluster?
- Tips and tricks about being more productive using a cluster.
- Practice creating and submitting more complex jobs: parallel jobs, job arrays, memory requirements, job dependencies, gpus
Introduction to Python
Date: Monday, April 26; Wednesday, April 28; Friday, April 30; Monday, May 3
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
This is a 12 hour introductory online workshop (3 hours a day over 4 days) on using the Python programming language, with a particular focus on data analysis using the Pandas library and plotting. No previous programming experience assumed (this course starts with the absolute basics). Either Python/Jupyter must be installed on your own computer, or a cloud based Jupyter environment can be used. If you do not have a version of Python and are not sure where to start, then consider following the instructions for your operating system here: https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/setup Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming.
Intermediate Python: Parallelism
Date: Wednesday, May 5
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
This half-day session will focus on writing parallel programs with Python (via the DASK library). Students should know some Python and Pandas. If you do not have a version of Python installed and are not sure where to start, then consider following the instructions for you operating system here: https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/setup (Or use a cloud-based Jupyter notebook platform, like Google Colab).
Intermediate Python: Plotting
Date: Friday, May 7
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
This half-day session will look at the Plotly library for creating interactive plots. Students should know some Python and Pandas. If you do not have a version of Python installed and are not sure where to start, then consider following the instructions for you operating system here: https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/setup (Or use a cloud-based Jupyter notebook platform, like Google Colab).
Intermediate Python: Introduction to Machine Learning
Date: Monday, May 10; Wednesday, May 12; Friday, May 14
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
This hands-on workshop (three half-days) will introduce students to central concepts in machine learning, and an introduction to some tools for doing predictive data science with Python. Students should know some Python and Pandas (e.g., via the Introduction to Python course). It includes an introduction to supervised learning (classification and regression), unsupervised learning (clustering) and basic neural networks. If you do not have a version of Python installed and are not sure where to start, then consider following the instructions for you operating system here: https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/setup (Or use a cloud-based Jupyter notebook platform, like Google Colab).
Cloud Intro
Date: Monday, May 17
Time: 10am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
You must have already heard about "Cloud" or "Cloud computing" or have seen this term everywhere. However, what is the nature of it? What's the difference from traditional computing model? How to access and use a cloud in particular for research purpose? The Cloud Intro will get you clarified with an overview of cloud including the the evolution of cloud computing, public & private clouds, and the clouds deployed by Compute Canada. You will also be guided on how to access the cloud resources that will be a pre-requisite of the next sessions: Cloud Hands-on and Cloud Advanced.
Cloud Hands-on
Date: Wednesday, May 19
Time: 10am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!
In this session, you will be guided step by step on how to use the Compute Canada cloud system including launching your own instances or virtual machines, setting up the environment such as network, authentication, storage volumes, etc. You will also be demonstrated how to conveniently access various research computing software repositories on the basis of CVMFS that is a powerful global software distribution system. Attendees are strongly recommended to take the Cloud Intro session and to register to Compute Canada before attending this session. While if you haven't you can still join us with using the preset guest user credentials.
Cloud Advanced
Date: Friday, May 21
Time: 10am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
This session aims to accommodate and to present different topics of advanced cloud technologies & applications in each season. During this season, we will explore how to deploy services and applications in an instance that will be created by yourself. You will be demonstrated using a tool called "Openstack Heat" to rapidly deploy some cloud services (for example, an Nginx-base web service) and then, by showcasing the deployment of a web based Tetris game, you will see the magic of deploying cloud based applications with just one command line. Attendees are strongly recommended to take the Cloud Intro and Hands-on sessions before attending this one that assumes audiences have the basic knowledge of cloud computing and of using Openstack dashboard.
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