Volume 11 Issue 1 — January 2020

PDF icon Download Full Issue PDF

Contents

Lessons Learned from the NASA-UVA Summer School and Internship Program

Katherine Holcomb, Jacalyn Huband, and Tsengdar Lee

pp. 3–7

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/1

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-1,
  author={Katherine Holcomb and Jacalyn Huband and Tsengdar Lee},
  title={Lessons Learned from the NASA-UVA Summer School and Internship Program},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={3--7},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/1}
}
Copied to clipboard!

From 2013 to 2018 the University of Virginia operated a summer school and internship program in partnership with NASA. The goal was to improve the software skills of students in environmental and earth sciences and to introduce them to high-performance computing. In this paper, we describe the program and discuss its evolution in response to student needs and changes in the high-performance computing landscape. The future direction for the summer school and plans for the materials developed are also discussed.

Northeast Cyberteam Program - A Workforce Development Strategy for Research Computing

John Goodhue, Julie Ma, Adrian Del Maestro, Sia Najafi, Bruce Segee, Scott Valcourt, and Ralph Zottola

pp. 8–11

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/2

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-2,
  author={John Goodhue and Julie Ma and Adrian Del Maestro and Sia Najafi and Bruce Segee and Scott Valcourt and Ralph Zottola},
  title={Northeast Cyberteam Program - A Workforce Development Strategy for Research Computing},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={8--11},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/2}
}
Copied to clipboard!

Cyberinfrastructure is as important for research in the 21st century as test tubes and microscopes were in the 20th century. Familiarity with and effective use of cyberinfrastructure at small and mid-sized institutions is essential if their faculty and students are to remain competitive. The Northeast Cyberteam Program is a 3-year NSF-funded regional initiative to increase effective use of cyberinfrastructure by researchers and educators at small and mid-sized institutions in northern New England by making it easier to obtain support from Research Computing Facilitators. Research Computing Facilitators combine technical knowledge and strong interpersonal skills with a service mindset, and use their connections with cyberinfrastructure providers to ensure that researchers and educators have access to the best available resources. It is widely recognized that Research Computing Facilitators are critical to successful utilization of cyberinfrastructure, but in very short supply. The Northeast Cyberteam aims to build a pool of Research Computing Facilitators in the region and a process to share them across institutional boundaries. Concurrently, we are providing experiential learning opportunities for students interested in becoming Research Computing Facilitators, and developing a self-service learning toolkit to provide timely access to information when it is needed.

Incorporating Complexity in Computing Camps for High School Students - A Report on the Summer Computing Camp at Texas A&M University

Dhruva K. Chakravorty, Marinus "Maikel" Pennings, Honggao Liu, Xien Thomas, Dylan Rodriguez, and Lisa M. Perez

pp. 12–20

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/3

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-3,
  author={Dhruva K. Chakravorty and Marinus "Maikel" Pennings and Honggao Liu and Xien Thomas and Dylan Rodriguez and Lisa M. Perez},
  title={Incorporating Complexity in Computing Camps for High School Students - A Report on the Summer Computing Camp at Texas A\&M University},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={12--20},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/3}
}
Copied to clipboard!

Summer computing camps for high school students are rapidly becoming a staple at High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and Computer Science departments around the country. Developing complexity in education in these camps remains a challenge. Here, we present a report about the implementation of such a program. The Summer Computing Academy (SCA) at is a weeklong cybertraining program offered to high school students by High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) at Texas A&M University (Texas A&M; TAMU). The Summer Computing Academy effectively uses cloud computing paradigms, artificial intelligence technologies coupled with Raspberry Pi micro-controllers and sensors to demonstrate "computational thinking". The program is steeped in well- reviewed pedagogy; the refinement of the educational methods based on constant assessment is a critical factor that has contributed to its success. The hands-on exercises included in the program have received rave reviews from parents and students alike. The camp program is financially self-sufficient and has successfully broadened participation of underrepresented groups in computing by including diverse groups of students. Modules from the SCA program may be implemented at other institutions with relative ease and promote cybertraining efforts nationwide.

Expanding user communities with HPC Carpentry

Alan Ó Cais and Peter Steinbach

pp. 21–25

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/4

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-4,
  author={Alan \'{O} Cais and Peter Steinbach},
  title={Expanding user communities with HPC Carpentry},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={21--25},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/4}
}
Copied to clipboard!

Adoption of HPC as a research tool and industrial resource is a priority in many countries. The use of data analytics and machine learning approaches in many areas also attracts non-traditional HPC user communities to the hardware capabilities provided by supercomputing facilities. As a result, HPC at all scales is experiencing rapid growth of the demand for training, with much of this at the introductory level. To address the growth in demand, we need both a scalable and sustainable training model as well as a method to ensure the consistency of the training being offered. Adopting the successful training model of The Carpentries (https://carpentries.org/) for the HPC space provides a pathway to collaboratively created training content which can be delivered in a scalable way (serving everything from university or industrial HPC systems to national facilities). We describe the ongoing efforts of HPC Carpentry to create training material to address this need and form the collaborative network required to sustain it. We outline the history of the effort and the practices adopted from The Carpentries that enable it. The lessons being created as a result are under active development and being evaluated in practice at sites in Europe, the US and Canada.

Blue Waters Workforce Development: Delivering National Scale HPC Workforce Development

Jennifer Houchins, Scott Lathrop, Robert Panoff, and Aaron Weeden

pp. 26–28

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/5

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-5,
  author={Jennifer Houchins and Scott Lathrop and Robert Panoff and Aaron Weeden},
  title={Blue Waters Workforce Development: Delivering National Scale HPC Workforce Development},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={26--28},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/5}
}
Copied to clipboard!

There are numerous reports documenting the critical need for high performance computing infrastructure to advance discovery in all fields of study. The Blue Waters project was funded by the National Science Foundation to address this need and provide leading edge petascale computing resources to advance research and scholarship. There are also numerous reports that identify the lack of an adequate workforce capable of utilizing and advancing petascale class computing infrastructure well into the future. From the outset, the Blue Waters project has responded to this critical need by conducting national scale workforce development activities to prepare a larger and more diverse workforce. This paper describes those activities as exemplars for adoption and replication by the community.

One Year HPC Certification Forum in Retrospective

Julian Martin Kunkel, Kai Himstedt, Weronika Filinger, Jean-Thomas Acquaviva, Anja Gerbes, and Lev Lafayette

pp. 29–35

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/6

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-6,
  author={Julian Martin Kunkel and Kai Himstedt and Weronika Filinger and Jean-Thomas Acquaviva and Anja Gerbes and Lev Lafayette},
  title={One Year HPC Certification Forum in Retrospective},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={29--35},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/6}
}
Copied to clipboard!

The ever-changing nature of HPC has always compelled the HPC community to focus a lot of effort into training of new and existing practitioners. Historically, these efforts were tailored around a typical group of users possessing, due to their background, a certain set of programming skills. However, as HPC has become more diverse in terms of hardware, software and the user background, the traditional training approaches became insufficient in addressing training needs of our community. This increasingly complicated HPC landscape makes development and delivery of new training materials challenging. How should we develop training for users, often coming from non-traditionally HPC disciplines, and only interested in learning a particular set of skills? How can we satisfy their training needs if we don't really understand what these are? It's clear that HPC centres struggle to identify and overcome the gaps in users' knowledge, while users struggle to identify skills required to perform their tasks. With the HPC Certification Forum, we aim to clearly categorise, define, and examine competencies expected from proficient HPC practitioners. In this article, we report the status and progress this independent body has made during the first year of its existence. The drafted processes and prototypes are expected to mature into a holistic ecosystem beneficial for all stakeholders in HPC education.

Project-Based Research and Training in High-Performance Data Sciences, Data Analytics, and Machine Learning

Kwai Wong, Stanimire Tomov, and Jack Dongarra

pp. 36–44

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/7

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-7,
  author={Kwai Wong and Stanimire Tomov and Jack Dongarra},
  title={Project-Based Research and Training in High-Performance Data Sciences, Data Analytics, and Machine Learning},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={36--44},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/7}
}
Copied to clipboard!

This paper describes a hands-on project-based Research Experiences for Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (RECSEM) program in high-performance data sciences, data analytics, and machine learning on emerging computer architectures. RECSEM is a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site program supported by the USA National Science Foundation. This site program at the University of Tennessee (UTK) directs a group of ten undergraduate students to explore, as well as contribute to the emergent interdisciplinary computational science models and state-of-the-art HPC techniques via a number of cohesive compute and data intensive applications in which numerical linear algebra is the fundamental building block. The RECSEM program complements the growing importance of computational sciences in many advanced degree programs and provides scientific understanding and discovery to undergraduates with an intellectual focus on research projects using HPC and aims to deliver a real-world research experience to the students by partnering with teams of scientists who are in the forefront of scientific computing research at the Innovative Computing Laboratory (ICL), and the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (JICS) at UTK and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The program also receives collaborative support from universities in Hong Kong and Changsha, China. The program focuses on scientific domains in engineering applications, image processing, machine learning, and numerical parallel solvers on supercomputers and emergent accelerator platforms, particularly their implementation on GPUs. The programs also enjoy close affiliations with researchers at ORNL. Because of these diverse topics of research areas and backgrounds of this project, in this paper we discuss the experiences and resolutions in managing and coordinating the program, delivering cohesive tutorial materials, directing mentorship of individual projects, lessons learned, and improvement over the course of the program, particularly from the perspectives of the mentors.

Computational Biology as a Compelling Pedagogical Tool in Computer Science Education

Vijayalakshmi Saravanan, Anpalagan Alagan, and Kshirasagar Naik

pp. 45–52

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/8

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-8,
  author={Vijayalakshmi Saravanan and Anpalagan Alagan and Kshirasagar Naik},
  title={Computational Biology as a Compelling Pedagogical Tool in Computer Science Education},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={45--52},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/8}
}
Copied to clipboard!

High-performance computing (HPC), and parallel and distributed computing (PDC) are widely discussed topics in computer science (CS) and computer engineering (CE) education. In the past decade, high-performance computing has also contributed significantly to addressing complex problems in bio-engineering, healthcare and systems biology. Therefore, computational biology applications provide several compelling examples that can be potent pedagogical tools in teaching high-performance computing. In this paper, we introduce a novel course curriculum to teach high- performance, parallel and distributed computing to senior graduate students (PhD) in a hands-on setup through examples drawn from a wealth of areas in computational biology. We introduce the concepts of parallel programming, algorithms and architectures and implementations via carefully chosen examples from computational biology. We believe that this course curriculum will provide students an engaging and refreshing introduction to this well-established domain.

FreeCompilerCamp.org: Training for OpenMP Compiler Development from Cloud

Anjia Wang, Alok Mishra, Chunhua Liao, Yonghong Yan, and Barbara Chapman

pp. 53–60

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/9

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-9,
  author={Anjia Wang and Alok Mishra and Chunhua Liao and Yonghong Yan and Barbara Chapman},
  title={FreeCompilerCamp.org: Training for OpenMP Compiler Development from Cloud},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={53--60},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/9}
}
Copied to clipboard!

OpenMP is one of the most popular programming models to exploit node-level parallelism of supercomputers. Many researchers are interested in developing OpenMP compilers or extending existing standard for new capabilities. However, there is a lack of training resources for researchers who are involved in the compiler and language development around OpenMP, making learning curve in this area steep. In this paper, we introduce an ongoing effort, FreeCompilerCamp.org, a free and open online learning platform aimed to train researchers to quickly develop OpenMP compilers. The platform is built on top of Play-With-Docker, a docker playground for users to conduct experiments in an online terminal sandbox. It provides a live training website that is set up on cloud, so anyone with internet access and a web browser will be able to take the training. It also enables developers with relevant skills to contribute new tutorials. The entire training system is open-source and can be deployed on a private server, workstation or even laptop for personal use. We have created some initial tutorials to train users to learn how to extend the Clang/LLVM and ROSE compiler to support new OpenMP features. We welcome anyone to try out our system, give us feedback, contribute new training courses, or enhance the training platform to make it an effective learning resource for the HPC community.

Self-paced Learning in HPC Lab Courses

Christian Terboven, Julian Miller, Sandra Wienke, and Matthias S. Müller

pp. 61–67

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/10

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-10,
  author={Christian Terboven and Julian Miller and Sandra Wienke and Matthias S. M\"{u}ller},
  title={Self-paced Learning in HPC Lab Courses},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={61--67},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/10}
}
Copied to clipboard!

In a software lab, groups of students develop parallel code using modern tools, document the results and present their solutions. The learning objectives include the foundations of High-Performance Computing (HPC), such as the understanding of modern architectures, the development of parallel programming skills, and coursespecific topics, like accelerator programming or cluster set up. In order to execute the labs successfully with limited personnel resources and still provide students with access to world-class HPC architectures, we developed a set of concepts to motivate students and to track their progress. This includes the learning status survey and the developer diary, which are presented in this work. We also report on our experiences with using innovative teaching concepts to incentivize students to optimize their codes, such as using competition among the groups. Our concepts enable us to track the effectiveness of our labs and to steer them for increasing sizes of diverse students. We conclude that software labs are effective in adding practical experiences to HPC education. Our approach to hand out open tasks and to leave creative freedom in implementing the solutions enables the students to self-pace their learning process and to vary their investment of effort during the semester. Our effort and progress tracking ensures the achieving of the extensive learning objectives and enables our research on HPC programming productivity.

Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (CMSE): Establishing an Academic Department Dedicated to Scientific Computation as a Discipline

Dirk Colbry, Michael Murillo, Adam Alessio, and Andrew Christlieb

pp. 68–72

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/11

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-11,
  author={Dirk Colbry and Michael Murillo and Adam Alessio and Andrew Christlieb},
  title={Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (CMSE): Establishing an Academic Department Dedicated to Scientific Computation as a Discipline},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={68--72},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/11}
}
Copied to clipboard!

The Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (CMSE) department is one of the newest units at Michigan State University (MSU). Founded in 2015, CMSE recognizes computation as the "triple junction" of algorithm development and analysis, high performance computing, and applications to scientific and engineering modeling and data science (as illustrated in Figure 1). This approach is designed to engage with computation as a new integrated discipline, rather than a series of decentralized, isolated sub-specialties. In the four years since its inception, the department has grown and flourished; however, the pathway was sometimes arduous. This paper shares lessons learned during the department's development and the initiatives it has taken on to support computational research and education across the university. By sharing these lessons, we hope to encourage and support the establishment of similar departments at other universities and grow this integrated approach to scientific computation as a discipline.

The Supercomputer Institute: A Systems-Focused Approach to HPC Training and Education

J. Lowell Wofford and Cory Lueninghoener

pp. 73–80

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/12

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-12,
  author={J. Lowell Wofford and Cory Lueninghoener},
  title={The Supercomputer Institute: A Systems-Focused Approach to HPC Training and Education},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={73--80},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/12}
}
Copied to clipboard!

For the past thirteen years, Los Alamos National Laboratory HPC Division has hosted the Computer System, Cluster and Networking Summer Institute summer internship program (recently renamed "The Supercomputer Institute") to provide a basis is cluster computing for undergraduate and graduate students. The institute invites 12 students each year to participate in a 10-week internship program. This program has been a strong educational experience for many students through this time, and has been an important recruitment tool for HPC Division. In this paper, we describe the institute as a whole and dive into individual components that were changed this year to keep the program up to date. We also provide some qualitative and quantitative results that indicate that these changes have improved the program over recent years.

Creating a Relevant, Application-Based Curriculum for High Performance Computing in High School

Vincent C. Betro and Mary E. Loveless

pp. 81–87

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/13

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-13,
  author={Vincent C. Betro and Mary E. Loveless},
  title={Creating a Relevant, Application-Based Curriculum for High Performance Computing in High School},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={81--87},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/13}
}
Copied to clipboard!

While strides have been made to improve science and math readiness at a college-preparatory level, some key fundamentals have been left unaddressed that can cause students to turn away from the STEM disciplines before they find their niche [10], [11], [12], [13]. Introducing collegiate level research and project-based, group-centered learning at a high school level has a multi-faceted effect; in addition to elevated learning outcomes in science and math, students exhibit improved critical thinking and communication skills, leading to improved preparedness for subsequent academic endeavors [1]. The work presented here outlines the development of a STEM ecosystem where both the science department and math department have implemented an interdisciplinary approach to introduce a spectrum of laboratory and computing research skills. This takes the form of both "in situ," micro-curricular elements and stand-alone research and computer science classes which integrate the language-independent concepts of abstraction and object-oriented programming, distributed and high-performance computing, and high and low-level language control applications. This pipeline has been an effective tool that has allowed several driven and interested students to participated in collegiate-level and joint-collegiate projects involving virtual reality, robotics and systems controls, and modeling. The willingness of the departments to cross-pollinate, hire faculty wellversed in research, and support students and faculty with the proper resources are critical factors in readying the next generation of computing leaders.

Introducing Novices to Scientific Parallel Computing

Stephen Lien Harrell, Betsy Hillery, and Xiao Zhu

pp. 88–92

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/14

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-14,
  author={Stephen Lien Harrell and Betsy Hillery and Xiao Zhu},
  title={Introducing Novices to Scientific Parallel Computing},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={88--92},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/14}
}
Copied to clipboard!

HPC and Scientific Computing are integral tools for sustaining the growth of scientific research. Additionally, educating future domain scientists and research-focused IT staff about the use of computation to support research is as important as capital expenditures on new resources. The aim of this paper it to describe the parallel computing portion of Purdue University's HPC seminar series which is used as a tool to introduce students from many non-traditional disciplines to scientific, parallel and high-performance computing.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Platform in Transitioning Users from a High Performance Computing to a Commercial Cloud Computing Environment

Dhruva Chakravorty and Minh Tri Pham

pp. 93–99

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/15

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-15,
  author={Dhruva Chakravorty and Minh Tri Pham},
  title={Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Online Learning Platform in Transitioning Users from a High Performance Computing to a Commercial Cloud Computing Environment},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={93--99},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/15}
}
Copied to clipboard!

Developments in large scale computing environments have led to design of workflows that rely on containers and analytics platform that are well supported by the commercial cloud. The National Science Foundation also envisions a future in science and engineering that includes commercial cloud service providers (CSPs) such as Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud. These twin forces have made researchers consider the commercial cloud as an alternative option to current high performance computing (HPC) environments. Training and knowledge on how to migrate workflows, cost control, data management, and system administration remain some of the commonly listed concerns with adoption of cloud computing. In an effort to ameliorate this situation, CSPs have developed online and in-person training platforms to help address this problem. Scalability, ability to impart knowledge, evaluating knowledge gain, and accreditation are the core concepts that have driven this approach. Here, we present a review of our experience using Google's Qwiklabs online platform for remote and in-person training from the perspective of a HPC user. For this study, we completed over 50 online courses, earned five badges and attended a one-day session. We identify the strengths of the approach, identify avenues to refine them, and consider means to further community engagement. We further evaluate the readiness of these resources for a cloud-curious researcher who is familiar with HPC. Finally, we present recommendations on how the large scale computing community can leverage these opportunities to work with CSPs to assist researchers nationally and at their home institutions.

Teaching HPC Systems Administrators

Alex Younts and Stephen Lien Harrell

pp. 100–105

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/16

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-16,
  author={Alex Younts and Stephen Lien Harrell},
  title={Teaching HPC Systems Administrators},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={100--105},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/16}
}
Copied to clipboard!

The ability to grow and teach systems professionals relies on having the capacity to let students interact with supercomputers at levels not given to normal users. In this paper we describe the teaching methods and hardware platforms used by Purdue Research Computing to train undergraduates for HPC systems-facing roles. From Raspberry Pi clusters to the LittleFe project, previous work has focused on providing miniature hardware platforms and developing curriculums for teaching. Recently, we have developed and employed a method using virtual machines to reach a wider audiences, created best practices, and removed barriers for approaching coursework. This paper outlines the system we have designed, expands on the benefits and drawbacks over hardware systems, and discusses the failures and successes we have had teaching HPC System Administrators.

Contributing HPC Skills to the HPC Certification Forum

Julian Kunkel, Kai Himstedt, Weronika Filinger, Jean-Thomas Acquaviva, Anja Gerbes, and Lev Lafayette

pp. 106–107

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/17

PDF icon Download PDF

BibTeX
@article{jocse-11-1-17,
  author={Julian Kunkel and Kai Himstedt and Weronika Filinger and Jean-Thomas Acquaviva and Anja Gerbes and Lev Lafayette},
  title={Contributing HPC Skills to the HPC Certification Forum},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2020,
  month=jan,
  volume=11,
  issue=1,
  pages={106--107},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/17}
}
Copied to clipboard!

The International HPC Certification Program has been officially launched over a year ago at ISC'18 and since then made significant progress in categorising and defining the skills required to proficiently use a variety of HPC systems. The program reached the stage when the support and input from the HPC community is essential. For the certification to be recognised widely, it needs to capture skills required by majority of HPC users, regardless of their level. This cannot be achieved without contributions from the community. This extended abstract briefly presents the current state of the developed Skill Tree and explains how contributors can extend it. In the talk, we focus on the contribution aspects.