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SciNet concludes its biggest-ever training week in scientific, high performance, and data science computing

June 19, 2018 in blog-general, for_educators, for_press, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, news, success_story

When summer arrives, it means the return of Ontario’s Summer School on Scientific and High Performance Computing. This annual set of educational events bring together graduate students, undergraduate students, postdocs and researchers and gives them an opportunity to learn and share knowledge and experience in technical computing, data science and biomedical computing on modern high-performance computing platforms.

The summer school has been given at three locations for the last seven years and is a collaborative effort of the three High-Performance Consortia in Ontario: SHARCNET, CAC, and SciNet. This year, the first was from May 28 to June 1 in London, while the second one was hosted by SciNet on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto from June 11 to 15, and the third will take place in Kingston from July 30 to August 3.

HPC Python session at the 2018 summer school

High Performance Computing with Python (“Parallel Python”) Session at the 2018 Ontario HPC Summer School in Toronto

The format of the school is that of a five-day intensive workshop with mixed lectures and hands-on sessions on a number of selected topics. The topics slightly vary by location, but may include shared memory programming, distributed memory programming and general purpose graphics processing unit programming, and Python, R, machine learning, neural networks, visualization, debugging, bioinformatics and bioimaging. To make all these topics fit in one week, the lectures are organized in different streams. In Toronto, there was a high performance computing stream, a data science stream, and a biomedical stream, given by instructors from SciNet, SHARCNET, and CAMH.

group photo HPC Summer School in Toronto

Group Photo of the 2018 Ontario HPC Summer School in Toronto

This year was SciNet’s biggest summer school yet. For the first time, there were more than two hundred participants, from widely varying academic background like Business Administration, Dentistry, Biology, Medicine, Economics, Health Sciences, Phyics, Chemistry, Engineering, and Astronomy. Those who attended at least three days received a certificate of attendance.

To get a sense of the tremendous growth of this event, consider that in 2012, one of the first years of the summer school, in Toronto, we had 35 participants in the summer school, issued 20 certificates, and a total of 400 contact-hours were delivered by a handful of instructors. In 2018, these numbers are 7 to 10 times larger: there were 211 participants, 135 certificates were issues, and 3800 contact-hours were delivered by 17 instructors. If that is not a clear enough indication of the demand for this kind of training, consider this: within one day of opening the registration, there were over 100 registrations, and just one week later, the 200 registration mark was crossed. There were people on the waiting list, although we made an effort to try and accommodate most people in the end.

The school is offered for free, but without support for travel, lodging or meals. It is therefore not surprising that most participants are from the Toronto area, but there was a sizeable number of attendants from outside Toronto (60), from outside of Ontario (15) and even from outside Canada (5).

The participants seem to really appreciate the event, as borne out by the preliminary results from the post-event survey. From the survey, we got suggestions for improvements for the future, such as (even) more hands-on and better explanation of prerequisites and software for the sessions. Nonetheless, 94% of the respondents was very satisfied with the summer school, and thought the overall value of the summer school was high. 92% would recommend the event to their peers. Interestingly, the answers to the question “What was the most important thing you learned or did during the summer school?” varied a lot, indicating, perhaps, that the broad range of offered topics allowed participants to pick what suits them best.

Organizing the school was a tremendous experience, made possible by 8 instructors and staff members from SciNet, 9 from CAMH, and 2 from SHARCNET. The University of Toronto provided the space for the session, while Compute Ontario sponsored the coffee-and-cookie breaks.

If you missed it this time, look for the announcement next spring of the 2019 Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing.

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Launch of the Niagara Supercomputer at SciNet

March 5, 2018 in for_educators, for_press, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, in_the_news, news, Road_to_Niagara

The Niagara supercomputer was officially launched on March 5th, 2018. We were honoured by the presence and remarks of Reza Moridi (Ontario Minister of Research, Innovation and Science), Nizar Ladak (Compute Ontario President and CEO), Dr. Roseann O’Reilly Runte (CFI President and CEO), Prof. Vivek Goel (Vice-president of Research and Innovation at the University of Toronto), and Prof. W. Richard Peltier (Scientific Director of SciNet).

SciNet’s CTO Daniel Gruner gave an overview of the new system:

Niagara is located at University of Toronto and operated by the university’s high-performance computing centre SciNet, but the system is open to all Canadian university researchers.

Niagara is the fastest computer system in the country and is able to run a single job across all 60,000 cores thanks to a high-performance network which interconnects all the nodes. For more information on the configuration, see here.

A time-lapse of the building of Niagara is available (part of SciNet’s YouTube channel):

This system is jointly funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Government of Ontario, and the University of Toronto.

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International HPC Summer School 2018 in Ostrava, by SciNet, XSEDE, PRACE and Riken

December 22, 2017 in for_educators, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, in_the_news, news

A High-Performance Computing Summer Institute
July 8-13, Ostrava, Czech Republic
Expenses-paid program
Apply by February 13, 2018
Website: http://ihpcss18.it4i.cz

Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States are invited to apply for the ninth International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences, to be held July 8 to 13, 2018, in Ostrava, in the Czech Republic, and hosted by the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre.

Applications are due Feb 13, 2018. The summer school is organized by the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (RIKEN AICS), and the SciNet HPC Consortium.

Leading computational scientists and HPC technologists from the U.S., Europe, Japan and Canada will offer instructions on a variety of topics and also provide advanced mentoring. Topics include:

HPC challenges by discipline
HPC programming proficiencies
Performance analysis & profiling
Algorithmic approaches & numerical libraries
Data-intensive computing
Scientific visualization
Canadian, EU, Japanese and U.S. HPC-infrastructures

The expense-paid program will benefit scholars from Canadian, European, Japanese and U.S. institutions who use advanced computing in their research. The ideal candidate will have many of the following qualities, however this list is not meant to be a “checklist” for applicants to meet all criteria:

Familiar with HPC, not necessarily an HPC expert, but rather a scholar who could benefit from including advanced computing tools and methods into their existing computational work
A graduate student with a strong research plan or a postdoctoral fellow in the early stages of their research efforts
Regular practice with parallel programming (i.e., student utilizes parallel programming generally on a monthly basis or more)
May have a science or engineering background, however, applicants from other disciplines are welcome provided their research activities include computational work.

Students from underrepresented groups in computing are highly encouraged to apply (i.e., women, racial/ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, etc.). If you have any questions regarding your eligibility or how this program may benefit you or your research group, please do not hesitate to contact the individual associated with your region below.

Interested students should apply by February 13, 2018. Participation, meals and housing will be covered for the selected participants, also support for intercontinental travel will be given (contingent to funding).

Further information and application, see http://ihpcss18.it4i.cz.

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Road to Niagara 1: Tightly Coupled Cluster Decommissioned

October 25, 2017 in frontpage, news, Road_to_Niagara

This is the first of a series of posts on the transition to SciNet’s new supercomputer called “Niagara”, which will replace our aging General Purpose Cluster (GPC) and Tightly Coupled Cluster (TCS). The transition to Niagara will take place in the fall of 2017, and the system is planned to be available to users in early 2018.

To make room for Niagara, old systems will have to go. Because enabling research computing is our priority, throughout the process of installting Niagara, at least 50% of the GPC will be kept running. The GPC will not be completely switched off until Niagara is available.

The first cluster to go was the TCS. This was SciNet’s first supercomputer, a 102-node, 3264-core, IBM Power 6 system installed in January of 2009.

The TCS was shut off on September 29, 2017, and physically removed in October. The end of an era.

As the pictures below show, you don’t just put your old supercomputer to the curb, there is a bit of work involved in removing it. It took about 8 hours, 14 pallets, 10 racks, and 3 truck loads. And a $5 bill was found under one of the TCS racks, so we made some money as well!

Currently we are in mids of finalizing the contract for Niagara, so the next post in this series will provided more details on the new system to come.

Decommissioning the old Power 6 TCS requires a little fork lift; those are heavy nodes.

TCS nodes taken out of their racks.

The empty space left behind by the TCS…

Decommissing TCS subfloor connections.

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New Courses and New Initiatives for this Coming Semester

September 2, 2017 in for_educators, for_press, frontpage, news, Uncategorized

Excited about the beginning of a new academic year?

We, at SciNet, certainly are!

SciNet has created several new courses for this coming fall semester and we are really excited about that!
Take a look at our education website to learn about all the courses and workshops that we will be offering.

In addition to the traditional courses on Scientific Computing, we have also added courses on Computational BioStatistics, Machine Learning and Neural Networks, and basic level introductory courses for students without any previous background on computing or programming!

Additionally, several members of our team have obtained Graduate restricted appointed positions at the Institute of Medical Sciences and the Physics Department!

The number of SciNet courses that are listed as U of T graduate courses continues to increase (no small feat for a non-teaching unit like SciNet). Our full-term graduate courses in 2017/2018 are

EES1127 “Quantitative Applications for Data Analysis”, at the Scarborough campus;
MSC1090 “Introduction to Clinical BioStatistics”, at the St. George campus;
PHY1610 “Scientific Computing for Physicists” , at the St. George campus.

Finally, starting this September we want to officially launch our “Research Initiative Program”!

This is a collaborative program, aimed to partner with research groups across the University, in order to boost and empower research.

Of course, research support is something that we have been doing since the beginning of SciNet, by providing technical support and the infrastructure to researchers for tackling their computational needs.
This program will go beyond that, by allowing researchers to explicitly partner with SciNet’s scientists, in order to pursue short and long term research projects.

More information about this program, ongoing collaborations and areas of expertise can be found at the
Research @ SciNet page.

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2017 Compute Ontario Summer School Central

June 14, 2017 in blog, blog-general, for_educators, for_press, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, news, Uncategorized

The Compute Ontario Summer School on Scientific and High Performance Computing is an annual educational event for graduate/undergraduate students, postdocs and researchers who are engaged in a compute intensive research. Held geographically in the west, centre and east of the province of Ontario, the summer school provides attendees with the opportunity to learn and share knowledge and experience in high performance and technical computing on modern HPC platforms.

Each site will have a slightly different list of courses. The summer school will include both in-class lectures and hands-on labs (done on the participants’ laptops). Those who attend at least three full days cumulatively will receive an official certificate in HPC training (i.e., a total of 6 full morning and afternoon sessions).

Instructors for this school have been provided by SciNet, CAMH and SHARCNET. Break refreshments are provided courtesy of Compute Ontario.

REGISTRATION

Registration for the central installment in Toronto from July 24-28, 2017 is now open!

The registration is free and is aimed at Compute Canada users as well as students, post-docs and other researchers from academic institutions. You do not need to have a SciNet account. Please be advised that seats are limited and tend to fill up.

More information and registration can be found on the summer school website.

SCHEDULE

High Performance Computing Stream	Data Science Stream	Biomedical Stream
Mon, Jul 24
Morning: 09:00-12:00
Welcome and Introduction to HPC and SciNet
Afternoon: 13:30-16:30
Shared Memory Programming with OpenMP	Introduction to the Linux Shell	PLINK
Tue, Jul 25
Morning: 09:00-12:00
Shared Memory Programming with OpenMP	Introduction to R	Next Generation Sequencing
Afternoon: 13:30-16:30
Programming Clusters with Message Passing Interface	Data Science with Python	RNASeq
Wed, Jul 26
Morning: 09:00-12:00
Programming Clusters with Message Passing Interface	Parallel R for Data Science	Python for MRI analysis
Afternoon: 13:30-16:30
Programming Clusters with Message Passing Interface	Python for High Performance Computing (Parallel Python)	Image Analysis at Scale
Thu, Jul 27
Morning: 09:00-12:00
Programming GPUs with CUDA	Visualization with Python	Machine Learning for Neuroimaging
Afternoon: 13:30-16:30
Programming GPUs with CUDA	Scientific Visualization Suites	R for MRI analysis
Fri, Jul 28
Morning: 09:00-12:00
Programming GPUs with CUDA	Debugging, Profiling and Bring-Your-Own-Code Lab	Public Datasets for Neuroimaging
Afternoon: 13:30-16:30
Programming GPUs with CUDA	Debugging, Profiling and Bring-Your-Own-Code Lab	Unit Testing / Neuroinformatics Pipeline Development

LOCATION

This event will be held in the Medical Science Building at the University of Toronto, 1 King Circle, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A8, Canada.

The nearest subway station is “Queen’s Park”. Paid parking is available on the St. George Campus.

LODGING

Lodging is not provided by the organization. If you require lodging, you will have to make arrangements yourself. It may be worthwhile checking out the University’s summer residence program at www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hs/summer .

MEALS

Meals are *not* provided by the organization, but refreshments will be provided during the morning and afternoon breaks, courtesy of Compute Ontario.

COMPUTING FACILITIES

For the hands-on sessions, participants are to bring their own laptop with working wireless and with an ssh client with X-windows installed. The latter is needed to connect to one of SciNet or SHARCNET supercomputers, to which the participant will get access for the duration of the School.

CERTIFICATES

Participants that complete at least three days worth of instruction (i.e., a total of 6 morning and afternoon sessions combined) are to receive a Compute Ontario Summer School Certificate on the last day of the School. Note that this certificate is separate from the SciNet certificates, but parts of the school may count towards a SciNet certificate as well.

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Grand Opening of the ArcNet Space at MaRS

May 15, 2017 in blog-general, for_educators, for_press, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, news, Uncategorized

On May 9, 2017, the Grand Opening of the ArcNet space took place (despite having moved a while ago). What is ArcNet? It is a space where expertise and support of Advanced Research Computing (the “ARC” in ArcNet) from three organizations come together. SciNet is the oldest of the three; It is the supercomputing consortium at the University of Toronto, which has been providing Canadian researchers with computational resources and expertise necessary to perform their research on scales not previously possible in Canada, from the biomedical sciences and aerospace engineering to astrophysics and climate science. SOSCIP is a research and development consortium that pairs academic and industry researchers with advanced computing tools to fuel Canadian innovation. The third organization, Compute Ontario, partners with the four academic computing consortia in Ontario aims to drive advanced computing to accelerate research and enhance competitiveness in the global marketplace resulting in a more prosperous Ontario.

The Grand Opening brought together many of our stakeholders, and was also attended by the Ontario Minister of Research, Innovation and Science, MPP Rezi Moridi, by the President of the University of Toronto Meric Gertler, by the Vice-President of Research at the University of Toronto Prof. Vivek Goel, and by the Scientific Directory of SciNet Prof. W. Richard Peltier. We were honoured that each was willing to say a few words about the opening of this space.

“This facility is a true partnership between the University of Toronto’s SciNet High Performance Computing Consortium, SOSCIP and Compute Ontario. Bringing them together in a state-of-the-art facility will strengthen their partnership and undoubtably create new opportunities to drive innovation through advanced computing in Ontario.” said Prof. Goel, one of the driving forces of the creation of the space.

The President of the University of Toronto reminded us that “With ARCNet, we have created an amazing hub of talent and technology that fosters collaboration between the public and private sector.”

Minister Rezi Moridi remarked that “Today we are here to celebrate the grand opening of the Advanced Research Computing facility. It is great to see that three organizations got together and set up this wonderful facility: SOSCIP,
Compute Ontario, and University of Toronto’s SciNet. I wish you all the best in serving our research community.”

The speeches were given in the new teaching and visualization room. This room holds up to 40 students and is already frequently used for courses and other events. It features a large visualization wall, i.e., a 13 x 7.5 feet ultrahigh resolution screen (8K, to be precise).

Two presentations were given by SciNet analysts to demonstrate the capabilities of this visualization wall; Ramses van Zon showed how to get insight into the complexity of the software installed on SciNet’s main cluster by using graph visualizations, while Marcelo Ponce showed visualizations of several aspects of interacting neutron stars, with data from numerical general relativity simulations.

You can see the capabilities of the visualization wall in the following video:

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International HPC Summer School 2017 in Boulder, CO

January 25, 2017 in for_educators, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, news, Uncategorized

Apply by 6 March, 2017
Expenses-paid program
Sponsored by PRACE, XSEDE, Riken, and Compute Canada
website: https://confluence.xsede.org/display/IH17/International+HPC+Summer+School+2017

The eighth International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences will be held from June 25-July 30, 2017, Boulder, Colorado, USA. This is an advanced summer school on High Performance Computing which targets graduate students who already have some experience in HPC parallel programming (for instance, MPI, OpenMP, or CUDA/OpenCL), preferably on software used in successful research projects.

The organizers of this summer school are XSEDE, PRACE, Compute Canada, and RIKEN.

Leading American, Canadian, European and Japanese computational scientists and HPC technologists will offer instruction on a variety of topics. The program is still being finalized, but previous summer schools included the following:

Access to EU, Canadian, Japanese and U.S. HPC-infrastructures
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
Scientific visualization

Participation in the summer school is decided through an application process. Meals, housing, and travel will be covered for the selected participants. Applications from students in all science and engineering fields are welcome. Ten out of 80 student participants will be from Canada. Preference will be given to applicants with parallel programming experience, and a research plan that will benefit from using high performance computing systems.

Applications are due by March 6, 2017
For further information and to apply online, please click here .

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SciNet’s new home… SciNet has moved to MaRS!

August 17, 2016 in for_press, frontpage, news

Welcome to SciNet’s new space: SciNet has moved to the new MaRS tower!!!

Our offices are now located on the eleventh floor, on the new MaRS tower at 661 University Avenue, Toronto, ON M5G 1M1.

Users are welcome to make an appointment with our personnel and stop by to visit our new space.

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2016 Ontario HPC Summer School – Toronto

June 2, 2016 in blog, blog-general, for_educators, for_press, for_researchers, for_users, frontpage, news

The 2016 Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing is a week-long academic workshop that provides attendees with opportunities to learn and share knowledge and experiences in high performance computing, technical computing, and data science. The Ontario HPC Summer School is given in three locations, in different weeks. The first one was from May 30 to June 3 in Hamilton, the second will be in Toronto from July 11 to 15, hosted by SciNet, while a third will take place in Ottawa from August 8 to 12.

The format of the school is that of a five-day workshop with mixed lectures and hands-on sessions on a number of selected topics, including shared memory programming, distributed memory programming and general purpose graphics processing unit programming, and data science. The program varies slightly per location.

Most sessions are given in parallel. When registering for the Toronto event, you can pick the sessions you are interested in from the following schedule (note that you cannot register for only part of a session):