To keep users posted on what’s going on at SciNet, we send monthly emails with the new features, planned courses and events and accomplishments at SciNet (Want to share a testimonial? Email it to support@scinet.utoronto.ca).

Below you will find the salient points of what has happened or changed during the last month and what will happen in the near future. Among these is the participation of Compute Canada in the International High Performance Computing Summer School in Budapest.

As always, details are available on the wiki or the SciNet education website.

– The SciNet team

Events Coming Up

Unless stated otherwise, all events take place at the SciNet Headquarters, Rm 235 of 256 McCaul Street, Toronto. All events below are free for users but we ask that you sign up (“enroll”) on the education website.

• February 4, 6, 11, 13, 25, 27, and March 4 and 6: 11am-12noon

  NUMERICAL TOOLS FOR PHYSICAL SCIENTISTS

  Lectures of Part 2 of the Scientific Computing Course

  Topics: Modeling, floating point computations, random numbers and Monte Carlo, ODEs and Molecular Dynamics, linear algebra, fast Fourier transforms

  Participation counts towards the SciNet Scientific Computing Certificate.

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Wednesday February 12, 10:30 am – 11:30 am

  INTRO TO SCINET

  A class of approximately 90 minutes where you will learn how to use the systems. Experienced users may still pick up some valuable pointers during these sessions.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet HPC Certificate.

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Wednesday February 12, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SCINET USER GROUP (SNUG) MEETING

  The SciNet Users Group (SNUG) meetings are every month on the second Wednesday, and involve (free) pizza, user discussion, feedback, and a one or two short talks on topics or technologies of interest to the SciNet community.

  This time, we will have

  • TechTalk:

    Intel Xeon Phi: An X86 Coprocessor with 50+ cores

    Scott Northrup (SciNet)

  • User discussion
  • Pizza!

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Tuesdays, almost bi-weekly, 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

  COAST-TO-COAST SEMINAR SERIES

  The Coast to Coast Seminar is an hour-long presentation given on a scientific topic and is made accessible to audiences at a number of remote sites across Canada through collaboration technology.

  SciNet is a local seminar location for this series.

  The topic of the Spring 2014 Coast to Coast seminar series is “Technology for Aging Well” and it is built around a pan-Canadian project titled AGE-WELL (Aging Gracefully across Environments using Technology to Support Wellness, Engagement and Long Life.)

  The focus of the series will be a discussion how to use technology in helping support the Canadian aging population to ensure that all Canadians can grow older with dignity and grace.

  Feb 25: Ron Baecker (U.Toronto) and David Kaufman (Simon Fraser U)
  
  Mar 11: Geoff Fernie (U.Toronto)
  
  Mar 25: Alex Mihailidis (U.Toronto) and Rafik A. Goubran (Carleton U)

  For more information see
  http://www.irmacs.sfu.ca/events/coast-coast-seminars
  or
  https://www.westgrid.ca/events/coast-to-coast-seminar-series

• Sunday March 9, 2014

  DEADLINE APPLICATION INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON HPC

  See below.

• Wednesday March 12, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SCINET USER GROUP (SNUG) MEETING

  TechTalk: TBA

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Wednesday March 12, 14:30 pm – 15:30 pm

  INTRODUCTION TO GPU COMPUTING USING CUDA

  Scott Northrup (SciNet)

  The CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) parallel programming model harnesses the power of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) to enable dramatic increases in computing performance for graphics, 3D content, video and scientific processing-intensive applications. This talk will provide an introduction to CUDA and examples of applications within research. Participants should be familiar with C/C++ development.

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

  This talk is also offered remotely, for details see:
  https://www.westgrid.ca/events/introduction-to-gpu-computing-using-cuda

• March 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, and April 1 and 3: 11am-12noon

  HIGH PERFORMANCE SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING

  Lectures of Part 3 of the Scientific Computing Course

  Topics: parallel programming concepts, shared memory parallel programming with openmp, distributed memory parallel programming with mpi, hybrid programming.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet HPC Certificate.

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Wednesday April 9, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SCINET USER GROUP (SNUG) MEETING

  TechTalk: TBA

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Wednesday May 14, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SCINET USER GROUP (SNUG) MEETING

  TechTalk: TBA

  For more information and enrollment, go to the course website.

• Sunday June 1 – Saturday June 6, Budapest, Hungary

  5TH INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON HPC CHALLENGES IN COMPUTATIONAL
  SCIENCES

  In this summer school, leading American, Canadian, European and Japanese computational scientists and HPC technologists will offer instruction on a variety of topics, including HPC challenges by discipline (e.g., bioinformatics, computer science, chemistry, and physics), HPC programming proficiencies, performance analysis & profiling, algorithmic approaches & numerical libraries, data-intensive computing and scientific visualization.

  Compute Canada/Calcul Canada invites students enrolled in science and engineering fields at Canadian post-secondary institutions to apply for one of 10 spots allocated to Canada.

  Interested students should apply by March 9, 2014.

  For more information see http://www.prace-ri.eu/International-Summer-School-2014.

• Summer 2014

  ONTARIO SUMMER SCHOOL ON HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING 2014

  Preparations are underway for the 2014 edition of the Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing. This summer school provides attendees with opportunities to learn and share knowledge and experience in high performance and technical computing.

  As in previous years, the Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing 2014 will likely have three installments, one in Western Ontario, one in Central Ontario and one in Eastern Ontario.

  Dates and locations are still to be determined, and will be announced in a future SciNet News email.

System News

• GPC: As a precaution, emails by the Moab/Torque scheduler have been disabled because of a potential security vulnerability.
• GPC: Version 4.1.2 of the intelmpi implementation installed as a module.
• GPC: Intel compiler 14.0.1 available as a module.
• GPC: Python 2.7.5 module now supports IPython Notebook.
• GPC: CP2K 2.4.0 installed as a module.
• GPC: Intel tools 2013 installed as module inteltools.

What’s New On The Wiki?

• Slides and Recordings of all 8 lectures of the “Scientific Software Development” mini-course
• Improved description of the Application Process for SciNet accounts
• Slides of the TechTalk “IPython Notebook on GPC”

What Else Happened at SciNet in the Last Month?

• Jan 15 & 16: Scheduled maintenance downtime
• Jan 14 & 28: Coast-to-coast seminars
• Jan 15: SciNet User Group meeting with TechTalk on the IPython Notebook
• Jan 7-30: Scientific software development mini course