Talks¶
Andy Turner, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh¶
The recent investments in national HPC services in the UK (for example the national Tier2 HPC services and DiRAC 2.5x) and the offerings from public cloud providers have led to a wider range of advanced computing architectures available to UK-based researchers. We have undertaken a comparative benchmarking exercise across these different services to help improve our understanding of the performance characteristics of these platforms and help researchers choose the best services for different stages of their research workflows. In this talk we will present results comparing the performance of different architectures for traditional HPC applications (e.g. CFD, periodic electronic structure), ML/DL applications and synthetic benchmarks (for assessing I/O and interconnect performance limits). We will also describe how we have used an open research model where all the results and analysis methodologies are publicly available at all times. We will comment on the ease (or not) of compiling applications on the different platforms in a performant way, assess the strengths and weakness of architectures for different workloads, and demonstrate the benefits of working in an open way.
Jon Gibson, Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG)¶
The POP (Performance Optimisation and Productivity) Centre of Excellence recently completed 2.5 years providing free HPC code profiling and optimisation services to academic, research and commercial organisations throughout the EU. The three-year follow-on service will start later this year. This talk will provide an overview of the services it offers, along with examples of some of the improvements made to HPC codes by the first POP service.
Mark Dawson, Swansea University¶
The Supercomputing Wales Programme
Supercomputing Wales is a new pan-Wales project to provide regional-level HPC facilities and RSE support to the universities of Swansea, Cardiff, Bangor and Aberystwyth. As part of this project, a cohort of 14 pan-Wales RSEs have been recruited to support HPC activity. The project will be introduced along with some case studies of development work and current challenges.
James Grant, University of Bath¶
A Whistlestop Tour of Isambard Hackathons
In GW4 we have held 2 Hackathons and a ‘Hackevent’ to prepare for delivery/production and build a regional collaborative community around Isambard. I will give an overview of what these events have entailed and how I this can help get us out of our silos, speak to each other, work collaboratively within/between centres and develop training material. Focussed events such as these could form part of the model for developing HPC Champions.
Phil Ridley, Arm Ltd¶
Porting HPC Applications to Arm
This talk will demonstrate just how easy it is to port applications to Arm HPC hardware, and achieve optimal performance. The Arm HPC software ecosystem will be introduced, including an overview of its commercial and open-source components. Results for porting a real application will also be discussed.
Alan Simpson, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh¶
ARCHER Champions is a network of HPC RSEs throughout the UK and was originally funded by EPSRC through the ARCHER Outreach Grant. The initial aims included developing this network through a series of workshops at different locations and ensuring the RSEs had the knowledge required to support local users applying for ARCHER. With the investment in Tier-2 systems, the remit of Champions was broadened to include the Tier-2 systems and to strengthen links between Tier-1 and Tier-2. Looking forward, the plan is to re-brand the workshops as “HPC Champions,” to ensure that the events are community-led and to continue building this network of RSEs working in HPC support across the UK.