Spring Research Computing Bootcamp starts April 29
Spring Research Computing Bootcamp starts April 29! Popular Python and HPC workshops are back. All spring workshops will be held online and there is no cost to attend.
Want to take your Python to the next level? Check out our Intermediate Python series:
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.
Research Computing Bootcamp Schedule
April 2022
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
May 2022
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2
9 am–12:30 pm
1–4 pm
|
3
9 am–12 noon
|
4
9–11 am
|
5
9 am–12 noon
|
6
1–4 pm
|
|
9
9:30 am–12 noon
|
10
9 am–12 noon
|
11
9:30 am–12 noon
|
12
9 am–12 noon
|
13
9:30 am–12 noon
|
See something you like? Register below! Please only sign up for a bootcamp if you are confident you can attend.
Introduction to Compute Canada and Bootcamp overview
Date: Friday, April 29, 2022
Time: 10–11 am
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
The first 30 minutes of the workshop is a high-level overview of what is offered to researchers by the Compute Canada Federation, the workshops in the bootcamp series, and how the bootcamps set researchers up to use the Federation. The second 30 minutes of the workshop is open time for questions. Not sure which Bootcamp sessions to take? Wondering how your particular research project fits into the Federation? This is an open space to ask these and similar questions.
HPC: Shell Basics
Date: Monday, May 2, 2022
Time: 9 am–12:30 pm
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, May 4, 2022
Time: 9–11 am
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 prepartory 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: Monday, May 2, 2022
Time: 1–4 pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
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.
HPC: Parallelism
Date: Friday, May 6, 2022
Time: 1–4 pm
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.
This workshop will include a simple and practical live demonstration running and viewing diffrent types of parallel progams/concepts on an HPC cluster.
HPC: Interactive Tuning & Debugging
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Time: 1–4 pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Your research has gone beyond the capabilities of your laptop, and you're now getting started with the cluster. Now what? How do you figure out what resources your jobs need on the cluster? What do you do when things go wrong? This workshop will share secrets of interactive cluster usage so you can schedule work efficiently, learn how to fix problems when things go wrong, and use the system for interactive code development. High performance computing (HPC) clusters are composed of Linux machines, understanding and controlling work on a cluster is an extension of the skills in doing the same on a Linux machine.
You will learn how to debug by determining the amount of resources (memory, open files, disk IO, IOPS, and network traffic) a program uses. We will cover what these resources are, and how to identify and solve potential problems.
Introduction to Python
Date: Tuesday, May 3; Thursday, May 5, Tuesday, May 10, Thursday, May 12, 2022
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
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://ualberta-rcg.github.io/python-intro/setup/
Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming.
Cloud Intro
Date: Monday, May 9, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
You may 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 purposes?
The Cloud Intro will clarify all of the above, starting with an overview of cloud computing including the evolution of HPC/ARC computer technologies, public & private clouds, and the cloud deployed by Compute Canada (CC), followed by an introduction to the CC cloud sites, compute resources and different types of cloud storage such as volume, shared filesystem, and object storage. Finally, you will be guided on how to apply for/access those cloud resources as a pre-requisite of the following two sessions: Cloud Hands-on and Cloud Advanced.
Cloud Hands-on
Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
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 shown how to conveniently access various research computing software repositories on the basis of CVMFS, an important and convenient research software distribution system.
Attendees are strongly recommended to take the Cloud Intro session and to register for an account with Compute Canada before attending this session (https://www.computecanada.ca/research-portal/account-management/apply-for-an-account/). If you haven't, you can still join us with using the pre-set guest user credentials.
Cloud Advanced
Date: Friday, May 13, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
This session aims to accommodate and to present different topics of advanced cloud technologies & applications in each bootcamp. During this bootcamp, we will explore how to deploy services and applications in an instance that will be created by yourself. You will be shown a tool called "Openstack Heat" to rapidly deploy some cloud services (for example, an Nginx-based 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 an Openstack dashboard.
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