The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer one-hour webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The April webinar is titled Evaluating Performance Portability of HPC Applications and Benchmarks Across Diverse HPC Architectures; and will be presented by JaeHyuk Kwack (Argonne National Laboratory). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET.

Abstract:

As HPC communities move into the exascale era, GPU-accelerated systems become one of the primary HPC architectures, and major processor vendors proactively lead technical innovation in the GPU ecosystem. The U.S. DOE has successfully supported this transformation to the next generation of HPC infrastructure through the Exascale Computing Project (ECP). NVIDIA has played a leading role to deploy multiple pre-exascale GPU systems (Summit at OLCF, Sierra at LLNL, Perlmutter at NERSC, and Polaris at ALCF). AMD and Intel are playing critical roles in developing exascale GPU systems, such as Frontier at OLCF, Aurora at ALCF, and El Capitan at LLNL. Simultaneously with the dynamic shifts in hardware, application developer communities have endeavored to maintain or increase their scientific throughputs by adopting performance portable programming models or frameworks, and it turns out a smooth transition is one of the necessary conditions to maintain productivity. In this webinar, the speaker will evaluate the progress being made on achieving performance portability by a subset of ECP applications or their related mini-apps, and approaches to achieving performance portability across diverse HPC architectures including AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.

The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer one-hour webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The May webinar is titled Acquisition and Analysis of Times Series of Satellite Data in the Cloud – Lessons from the Field; and will be presented by Marisol Garcia-Reyes (Farallon Institute). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET.

Abstract:

Satellite data has grown and matured to levels that allow powerful and relevant analysis in climate science, which requires time series spanning decades. Acquiring such data has been a technical and coding challenge given the historical formats in which data is stored, and analyzing the data has required high levels of coding expertise. With technological advances, like the coding language Python and new storage and process capabilities available in the cloud, there is great potential to increase the use of satellite data in new and diverse research areas. This requires, however, expanding the user base by building capacity in groups with limited coding or technological expertise. A challenge is the steep learning curve for these new technological advances, which can be intimidating and discouraging. To provide a taste of the new technologies and opportunities they provide, the presenter has developed a tutorial to teach potential new users how to acquire, synthesize and analyze satellite and satellite-based time series of data, while learning and using Python and cloud advances in the process. In this webinar, the speaker will share the lessons learned in making and teaching the tutorial, which can be found at https://github.com/marisolgr/python_sat_tutorials.

The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The June webinar is titled Normalizing Inclusion by Embracing Difference; and will be presented by Mary Ann Leung (Sustainable Horizons Institute). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET. This webinar will differ from others in the series, as it will include interactions among the participants and be 90 minutes in length.

Abstract:

Computational science and engineering (CSE) is an inter- and multidisciplinary field. Given the technical breadth of CSE, one might expect CSE communities to include a broad range of demographics, creating an ideal ecosystem for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). However, while research indicates that social diversity results in greater innovation, the CSE workforce remains largely homogeneous. This interactive webinar will explore what it takes to achieve DEI, how DEI could increase innovation and developer productivity, as well as how cultivating respect and embracing difference could help to make inclusion the norm. The webinar will also include important activities for applying the concepts discussed, deepening understanding, and increasing potential impact.

This webinar is co-organized with the ECP’s newly established HPC Workforce Development and Retention Action Group, which organizes a webinar series on topics related to developing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work culture in the computing sciences.

The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer one-hour webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The July webinar is titled Growing preCICE from an as-is Coupling Library to a Sustainable, Batteries-included Ecosystem; and will be presented by Gerasimos Chourdakis (Technical University of Munich). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, July 6, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET.

Abstract:

Starting humbly as a coupling library for fluid-structure interaction problems used by just a few academic groups in Germany, preCICE has grown to a complete coupling ecosystem used by more than 100 research groups worldwide, and for a wide range of multi-physics applications. How did that happen? Apart from the library itself, preCICE now maintains ready-to-use adapters for several open-source solvers, tutorial cases, documentation, and more. Users can thus easily couple popular open-source solvers (such as OpenFOAM, SU2, deal.II, or FEniCS) with their in-house simulation software (written in C++, C, Fortran, Python, Matlab, or Julia). In parallel to this, the developers of preCICE had to learn how to write more effective documentation (avoiding fragmentation and getting the user in the loop), how to manage the rapidly growing community (switching from a mailing list to a chatroom and then to a dedicated Discourse forum), and how to organize workshops and training courses. This webinar will focus on lessons learned that can help any research software project grow in a sustainable way.

The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer one-hour webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The August webinar is titled Effective Strategies for Writing Proposal Work Plans for Research Software; and will be presented by Chase Million (Million Concepts). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET.

Abstract:

Effective research proposals must persuade review panels that the project objectives can be achieved and that the requested resources are reasonable and sufficient resources for doing so. A clear, plausible work plan is central to this persuasive process. Despite the fact that many research projects require a great deal of software development, the true costs of software development tasks are often underappreciated and underestimated by both proposers and reviewers. Accurately judging and communicating these costs leads to better proposal and project outcomes. We will quickly survey software project scoping, requirements elicitation, and estimation methods appropriate for the pre-proposal phase, then explain how these can be used to generate a strong and convincing work plan. Topics will include vision and scope, concept of operations, and requirements specification documents; work breakdown structures; requirements / task matrices; and Gantt charts. Strategies for maximizing the impact of these artifacts within a research proposal will be discussed, with suggestions for further reading.

This panel discussion will draw from a featured breakout session held during the 2022 ECP Annual Meeting.

Abstract:

The ECP core mission is to develop a capable exascale computing ecosystem that accelerates scientific discovery and supports addressing critical challenges in energy, earth systems, materials, data, and national security.  The very nature of this mission has drawn a wide range of talented and successful scientists with diverse backgrounds to work together in new ways toward this goal. In this panel discussion, we build on lessons learned from the experiences of the PETSc, Trilinos, xSDK, and E4S as viewed from the lens of “Team of Teams.” We consider how, why, and when each of these distributed teams may and may not function as Teams of Teams and when applying Team of Teams principles might benefit. We present strategies centered around developing engaged and productive virtual software teams and offer a deeper dive into these communities.  We explore how developing a capable exascale ecosystem depends on meeting technical, social, and cultural challenges.

Panelists:

• Todd Munson, Argonne National Laboratory
• Jim Willenbring, Sandia National Laboratories
• Ulrike Yang, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Moderators:

• Elaine Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories
• Reed Milewicz, Sandia National Laboratories
• Miranda Mundt, Sandia National Laboratories
• Benjamin Sims, Los Alamos National Laboratories

The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC, and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP), organizes the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers.

As part of this series, we offer one-hour webinars on topics in scientific software development and high-performance computing, approximately once a month. The September webinar is titled Software Packaging; and will be presented by David Rogers (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, September 7, 2022 at 1:00 pm ET.

Abstract:

The ability to “import” a package is the critical enabling technology for software re-use. As a package developer, there are a variety of standards and tools we can adopt to make importing our work easier for our users. This webinar surveys packaging technologies and ideas popular in scientific software (C++, python, and Fortran with autoconf, cmake, python builds, spack, and containers). Good re-usability is a product of thoughtful program structure, build process, version control, and testing. By examining some real-world examples, we show how these steps build on each other in “live” projects to make easy connections between software deployment and package use.