Summary

• The full datacentre shutdown that was originally scheduled for December 18, 2018, is postponed to January 15 and 16, 2019, and combined with annual maintenance.
• While the University of Toronto will be closed from Dec 22 to Jan 6. SciNet support will be on a “best effort” basis.
• Time limits of jobs on Niagara are now 24 hours for all users.
• Winter training and education schedule announced.
• Application for International HPC Summer School in Japan in July is open.

Details can be found below and are also available on the SciNet education website courses.scinet.utoronto.ca and the SciNet wiki docs.scinet.utoronto.ca.

System News

• The SciNet datacentre will undergo a two-day maintenance shutdown on January 15th and 16th 2019, starting at 7 am EST on the 15th. There will be no access to any of the SciNet systems (Niagara, P7, P8, BGQ, SGC, HPSS, Teach cluster, or the filesystems) during this time.

  This is in preparation for the upcoming installation of an emergency power generator and a larger UPS, which will result in increased resilience to power glitches and outages.

  The status of the Niagara cluster can be checked on status.computecanada.ca. For up-to-date and more detailed information on the status of all the SciNet systems, you can always check https://docs.scinet.utoronto.ca.

• The walltime limit of jobs on Niagara is now 24 hours for all users.
• While the University of Toronto is closed from December 22, 2018 to January 6, 2019, the SciNet systems will remain available. However, support will be on a “best effort” basis during the break.

Events Coming Up

Unless stated otherwise, all events listed below take place at the SciNet Teaching Room at our offices on the eleventh floor of the MaRS West Tower, suite 1140A (661 University Avenue, Toronto ON M5G 1M1).

Most events will be recorded and some are broadcast, but only some of the courses can be taken remotely for SciNet certificate credits, as indicated below.

Registration for SciNet courses is done by logging into https://support.scinet.utoronto.ca/education with your Compute Canada account (the same one that you use to log into Niagara).

• INTRO TO SCINET AND NIAGARA Wednesday Jan 16, 2019, 10:00 am – 11:30 am SciNet Boardroom (suite 1140, 661 University Avenue, Toronto ON M5G 1M1).

  This is a class of approximately 60-90 minutes to introduce SciNet and the new supercomputer Niagara and teach you how to use Niagara.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet HPC Certificate.

  For more information and (free) registration, go to https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/418

  Further sessions of this Intro are planned for February 13, March 13, April 10 and May 8, 2019.

• SCINET USER GROUP MEETING Wednesday Jan 16, 2019, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm SciNet Boardroom (suite 1140, 661 University Avenue, Toronto ON M5G 1M1).

  Pizza, user discussion, and a tech talk TDB

  For sign up and more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/423

  Further SNUG sessions are planned for: February 13, March 13, April 10, and May 8, 2019.

• INTRODUCTION TO THE LINUX SHELL Wednesday January 16, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon SciNet Teaching Room

  Learn the basics of how to use the unix shell in two hours. Very useful for new users of SciNet that have little or no experience with unix or linux.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet Scientific Computing Certificate.

  For sign up and more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/428

  Further “Intro to the Linux shell” sessions are planned for: March 13 and May 8, 2019.

• ADVANCED LINUX SHELL PROGRAMMING Wednesday February 13, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm SciNet Teaching Room

  Learn how to write bash script, use environment variables, how to control process, and much more. Requires some linux basic command line experience.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet Scientific Computing Certificate.

  For sign up and more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/431

  Another “Advanced Shell Programming” session is planned for April 10, 2019.

• SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING FOR PHYSICISTS (PHY1610) Winter 2019, starting January 8 SciNet Teaching Room

  This course is aimed at reducing your struggle in getting started with computational projects, and make you a more efficient computational scientist. Topics include well-established best practices for developing software as it applies to scientific computations, common numerical techniques and packages, and aspects of high performance computing. While we will introduce the C++ language, in one language or another, students should already have some programming experience. Despite the title, this course is suitable for many physical scientists (chemists, astronomers, …).

  This course is part of the physics graduate program. Students willing to take the course as part of their graduate program have to enroll through Acorn/ROSI.

  For more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/398

• QUANTITATIVE APPLICATIONS FOR DATA ANALYSIS Winter 2019, starting January 9 University of Toronto Scarborough Campus

  In this course data analysis techniques utilizing Python and R statistical language, will be discussed and introduced, as well as, the basics of programming and scientific computing. The goal of this course is to prepare graduate students to perform scientific data analysis. Successful students will learn how to use statistical inference tools to gain insight into large and small data sets, as well as be exposed to cutting-edge techniques and best practises to store, manage and analyze (large) data.

  Topics include: Python and R programming, version control, automation, modular programming and scientific visualization.

  Students willing to take the course as part of their graduate program have to enroll through Acorn/ROSI. This course is part of the EES graduate program and to be taught at the UTSc campus.

  For more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/403

• INTRODUCTION TO NEURAL NETWORK PROGRAMMING Starting April 23, 2019, 6 weeks, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00 am – 12:00 noon SciNet Teaching Room

  This six-week class will introduce neural network programming concepts, theory and techniques. The class material will begin at an introductory level, intended for those with no experience with neural networks, eventually covering intermediate-to-advanced concepts. The programming language will be Python 3.7; experience with Python programming will be assumed. The Keras neural network framework will be used for neural network programming; no experience with Keras will be expected.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet Data Science Certificate.

  For sign up and more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/417

• RELATIONAL DATABASE BASICS Wednesday May 1, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm SciNet Teaching Room

  Principles and uses of relational databases with practical examples using python and sqlite.

  Participation counts towards the SciNet Data Science Certificate.

  For sign up and more information, see https://courses.scinet.utoronto.ca/433

• INTERNATIONAL HPC SUMMER SCHOOL July 7-12, 2019 Kobe, Japan

  This summer school will familiarize the best students in computational sciences with major state-of-the-art aspects of HPC for a variety of scientific disciplines, catalyze the formation of networks, provide advanced mentoring, facilitate international exchange and open up further career options. Leading Canadian, European, Japanese and American computational scientists and HPC technologists will offer instruction in parallel sessions on a variety of topics as: HPC challenges in major scientific disciplines, HPC programming proficiencies, Performance analysis and profiling, Software engineering, Numerical libraries, Big data analysis and analytics, Machine learning, Scientific visualization, and Canadian, European, Japanese and US HPC infrastructure.

  SciNet invites students and early-career post-docs in science, engineering, and other fields at Canadian post-secondary institutions to apply for one of the eight spots allocated to Canada. Travel, lodging and meal expenses of the selected candidates will be covered.

  Applications are due February 4, 2019.

  For more information and application see https://ss19.ihpcss.org.

• COMPUTE ONTARIO SUMMER SCHOOL Summer 2019

  The Compute Ontario Summer School on Scientific and High Performance Computing is an annual educational event for graduate/undergraduate students, postdocs and researchers to learn and share knowledge and experience in high performance and technical computing on modern HPC platforms.

  As in previous years, the 2019 Summer School is expected to have three installments, “West”, “Central”, and “East”. Each will be a week-long event with multiple parallel streams.

  More details will be announced later in 2019.

• SCALING TO PETASCALE INSTITUTE Summer 2019

  This will be a free virtual advanced HPC summer school, organized by a number of the US XSEDE sites, also hosted at SciNet. Topics will likely include OpenMP, MPI, CUDA, and OpenACC.

  More details will be announced later in 2019.