EVENTS COMING UP

• September 5-6, 10:00 pm – 2:00 am: NO CONNECTION TO SCINET

  For router maintenance, users will not be able to log into SciNet during this window. Running jobs will not be affected.

• Wednesday September 12, 10:00 am – 11:30 am

  INTRO TO SCINET

  Learn what SciNet resources are available, how to compile your code and how to use the batch system, in approximately 90 minutes. Highly recommended for new users, but experienced users may still pick up some valuable pointers.

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/74

  You are encouraged to stick around for the immediately following SNUG meeting (please sign up separately).

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

  SNUG MEETING

  The SciNet Users Group (SNUG) meetings are held every month on the second Wednesday, and involve pizza, user discussion, feedback, and one or two short talks on topics or technologies of interest to the SciNet community. These ‘TechTalks’ are intended to be given by users (as well as occasionally by SciNet analysts), and provide an opportunity to share your SciNet experiences, tips and tricks.

  The subject of this month’s TechTalk is:

  SCIENCE IS DATA

  or

  Why Optimizing Your Workflow and Data Management on SciNet
  Enables More and Better Science, With a Bird's-Eye View of How
  To Achieve This Based on Several Successful Use-Cases, and
  Including The Possible Use of HPSS for Big Data.

  Presented by several of the SciNet’s analysts.

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/69

• Monday September 17, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

  SCINET DEVELOPER SEMINAR

  IBM XL COMPILERS AND OPTIMIZATION

  By Kit Barton (IBM Toronto Compiler Team)

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/75

• Tuesday September 25, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

  WORKFLOW OPTIMIZATION FOR LARGE SCALE BIOINFORMATICS

  For more information and sign up, see https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/76

• Wednesday October 10, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon

  INTRO TO THE LINUX SHELL

  Extremely useful for new users of SciNet that are not yet familiar with the Linux shell or other unix prompt systems.

  For more information (soon) and sign up, see https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/77

• Wednesday October 10, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SNUG MEETING W/TECHTALK:

  OVERVIEW OF THE NEW BLUE GENE/Q SYSTEM AT SCINET

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/70

• Tuesday October 23, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

  SCIDEV SEMINAR

  THE JULIA LANGUAGE

  By Michael Nolta (CITA, Toronto)

  From julialang.org:

  "Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming
  language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar
  to users of other technical computing environments."

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/78

• Tuesday October 30, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

  HYBRID OPENMP/MPI PROGRAMMING

  For more information and sign up, see https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/79

• Wednesday November 7, 10:00 am – 11:30 am

  INTRO TO SCINET

  Learn what SciNet resources are available, how to compile your code and how to use the batch system, in approximately 90 minutes. Intended for new users, but experienced users may still pick up some valuable pointers.

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/80

• Wednesday November 7, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm

  SNUG MEETING

  TechTalk: TBA (Want to present? Email support@scinet.utoronto.ca)

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/71

• Tuesday November 20, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

  SCIDEV SEMINAR

  OPENACC: PROGRAMMING GPUS USING COMPILER DIRECTIVES

  For more information and sign up, see https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/81

• Tuesday November 27, 9:00 am 5:00 pm

  PARALLEL DEBUGGING WITH DDT

  For more information and sign up, see https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/82

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

  SNUG MEETING

  TechTalk: TBA (Want to present? Email support@scinet.utoronto.ca)

  Sign up at https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/courses/?q=node/72

SYSTEM CHANGES

• Scratch purging: Despite the three month limit, scratch is starting to get full. Users with material on scratch that they could delete or can move elsewhere, are strongly encouraged to do so. Treating scratch as permanent storage by touching your files so they will not get deleted is not an acceptable usage. Remember that scratch is not backed-up, so there is no protection against e.g. accidental deletion or overwriting of files.
• GPC: The GPC queues now have a minimum walltime of 15 minutes. For very short test runs, please use the debug queue, which does not have this restriction.
• GPC: new version of GNU parallel in module gnu-parallel/20120622. The older version from 2010 is still the default, because a few flags have changed.
• TCS: New module gmake/3.82.
• TCS and P7: New versions of the C, C++, and Fortran compilers are available in the modules vacpp/12.1 and xlf/14.1, respectively. Versions vacpp/11.1 and xlf/13.1 are still the default.
• ARC: The scheduler on the ARC is now integrated with the GPC.
• ARC: Portland Group compilers (version 12.6) are now available as module pgi/12.6. Having access to these compilers is one of the perks of being an “NVIDIA CUDA Research Center”. These PGI compilers have support for GPGPU programming through Fortran CUDA and OpenACC, in addition, of course, to the traditional support for C, C++, Fortran, OpenMP and MPI. This version supports cuda 4.2.

  For more info, see the wiki page for the GPU nodes of the ARC.

• BGQ: The Blue Gene/Q is being delivered. More details later…

ADDED TO THE WIKI

All new wiki content below is listed and linked on the main page: http://wiki.scinethpc.ca/wiki/index.php/SciNet_User_Support_Library#What.27s_New_On_The_Wiki)

• The wiki front page now has a separate ‘System Update’ box. Whenever you are wondering if we have changed something on the system, check here first.
• Updated FAQ entry to account for minimum 15 minute walltime.
• Info on submitting jobs on GPU Cluster, now integrated into GPC scheduler.
• How to use the PGI compilers supporting OpenACC and Cuda Fortran on the GPU cluster.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED AT SCINET IN JULY/AUGUST?

• July 9: Intro to SciNet
• July 8, 15, 26: Power glitches took down the data centre. Systems were brought back up on the same day.