Winter Research Computing Bootcamp starts February 2

  • 20 January 2021

Winter Research Computing Bootcamp starts February 2nd! Popular Python, HPC, and Cloud workshops are back. All winter workshops will be held online. There is no cost to attend.

Thank you for the overwhelming interest! The majority of our workshops have filled. We encourage you to sign up for a waitlist, visit workshop recordings from our Fall Bootcamp, and sign up to our newsletter to be notified of upcoming bootcamps.

Winter 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.

 bootcamp_schedule_winter.png

HPC: Shell
Date: Wednesday, February 3
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson

AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!

This 3-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 commands used in such an environment such as 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: Essentials
Date: Friday, February 5
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski

AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!

This is the second 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.

Introduction to Python, Pandas, and Plotting (4 half-days)
Date: Tuesday, February 2; Thursday, February 4; Tuesday, February 9; and Thursday, February 11
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.

Cloud: Hands On
Date: Monday, February 8
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 the terms everywhere, and you cannot wait to see what it looks like and how to "play" with it, or you have known the basics but are eager to explore more advanced features of cloud. Either way, this workshop series is the right one for you.

It contains 3 sessions, starting with "Cloud: Hands On" you will be guided, step by step, on to use the Compute Canada cloud system to launch your own cloud instance, set up the environment, and install software to it. The next session is "Cloud: Storage" and it will introduces you to different types of storage systems that can be used in your cloud instances, such as volumes, shared filesystem, and object storage. With the instance and storage set up, the third session,"Cloud: Orchestration", will explore how to deploy services and applications on your instance. You will see a demonstration of how to use a tool called "Openstack Heat" to rapidly deploy cloud services and applications without having to manually configure each instance every time.

Cloud: Storage
Date: Wednesday, February 10
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 the terms everywhere, and you cannot wait to see what it looks like and how to "play" with it, or you have known the basics but are eager to explore more advanced features of cloud. Either way, this workshop series is the right one for you.

It contains 3 sessions, starting with "Cloud: Hands On" you will be guided, step by step, on to use the Compute Canada cloud system to launch your own cloud instance, set up the environment, and install software to it. The next session is "Cloud: Storage" and it will introduces you to different types of storage systems that can be used in your cloud instances, such as volumes, shared filesystem, and object storage. With the instance and storage set up, the third session,"Cloud: Orchestration", will explore how to deploy services and applications on your instance. You will see a demonstration of how to use a tool called "Openstack Heat" to rapidly deploy cloud services and applications without having to manually configure each instance every time.

Cloud: Orchestration
Date: Friday, February 12
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 the terms everywhere, and you cannot wait to see what it looks like and how to "play" with it, or you have known the basics but are eager to explore more advanced features of cloud. Either way, this workshop series is the right one for you.

It contains 3 sessions, starting with "Cloud: Hands On" you will be guided, step by step, on to use the Compute Canada cloud system to launch your own cloud instance, set up the environment, and install software to it. The next session is "Cloud: Storage" and it will introduces you to different types of storage systems that can be used in your cloud instances, such as volumes, shared filesystem, and object storage. With the instance and storage set up, the third session,"Cloud: Orchestration", will explore how to deploy services and applications on your instance. You will see a demonstration of how to use a tool called "Openstack Heat" to rapidly deploy cloud services and applications without having to manually configure each instance every time.

Parallelism
Date: Friday, February 5
Time: 1pm - 2:30pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski

We've opened more spots, register now!

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.

Scheduling
Date: Friday, February 19
Time: 9am-4pm (break from 12pm-1pm)
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski

We've opened more spots, register now!

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
  • GPUs introduce complexity into scheduling, while a basic GPU job is simple, to be effective requires a much higher skill set.

Intermediate Python: Parallelism
Date: Tuesday, February 16
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: Thursday, February 18
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: Tuesday, February 23; Thursday, February 25
Time: 9am - 12pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want

AT CAPACITY - Register for the waitlist!

This hands-on workshop (two 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. 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).

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