The IDEAS Productivity project, in partnership with the DOE Computing Facilities of the ALCF, OLCF, and NERSC and the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP) has resumed the webinar series on Best Practices for HPC Software Developers, which we began in 2016.
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 What I Learned from 20 Years of Leading Open Source Projects, and will be presented by Wolfgang Bangerth (Colorado State University). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 2:00 pm ET. This webinar will start one hour later than the usual time.
Abstract:
Scientific software has grown from loose collections of individual routines working on relatively simple data structures to very large packages of 100,000s to millions of lines of code, with dozens of contributors, and hundreds or thousands of users. In the process, the approaches to software development have also drastically changed: both the software packages as well as their development are professionally managed, with version control, extensive test suites, and automatic regression checks for every patch. Maybe more interestingly, the approaches to managing the *community* of software developers and users have also dramatically changed.
Having led two large, open source software projects (the finite element package deal.II, and the Advanced Simulator for Problems in Earth ConvecTion ASPECT) for more than 20 years, the presenter will share lessons learned about both the technical management of scientific software projects, as well as the social side of these projects.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and transition to remote work, ECP and the IDEAS Productivity project launched the panel series Strategies for Working Remotely, which explores important topics in this area.
Abstract:
- Many organizations abruptly transitioned from a primarily on-site to a primarily remote work experience last spring. However, organizations still have training needs that were once largely accomplished through in-person events such as workshops, hackathons, and tutorials. This panel shared what they learned during the past year in their efforts to bring more virtualization to what historically has worked for in-person training events. What worked well? What did not work? This panel shared their insights about lessons learned over the past year and how those experiences will inform plans moving forward when organizations can safely offer in-person training again.
Panelists:
- Kelly Barnes, The Carpentries
- Helen He, NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Julia Levites, Nvidia Corporation
- Thomas Papatheodore, OLCF, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Moderators:
- Ashley Barker, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Osni Marques, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
New Features in the HDF5 1.13.0 Release
This webinar will cover the the major new features of the HDF5 1.13.0 release. It will cover pluggable virtual file drivers (VFDs) and changes to the virtual object layer (VOL), and show how to build and use the async, pass-through, and cache VOL connectors.
More information about the webinar, including registration, can be found here.
Abstract:
The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Stack (E4S) is a collection of open source packages for running scientific applications on high performance computing platforms. The E4S stack comes with 80+ applications including programming models, MPI, development tools such as HPCToolkit, TAU and PAPI, and math libraries, including PETSC and Trilinos. E4S is available for use via containers, buildcache, AWS EC2 image, and facility tuned spack environments in the form of spack.yaml. NERSC has deployed three versions of E4S (20.10, 21.02, 21.05) on Cori system using the spack package manager. NERSC plans to use E4S as the vehicle for installing and supporting much of the software provided for users on Perlmutter.
E4S is an ECP funded project that includes software products from Software Technology (ST) and Application Development (AD) teams. In this session, Mike Heroux (Director of Software Technology) will provide an overview of the ST focus area, future roadmap of ECP and E4S.
The Software Deployment group is responsible for deploying ECP software at the DOE facilities by partnering with AD and ST projects to properly tune their software for each facility. This group is responsible for providing CI infrastructure to help AD/ST teams automate their workflows. Ryan Adamson will provide an overview of Software Deployment group including current challenges and future roadmap.
Sameer Shende will present the components of E4S, how to use E4S containers, replacing MPI in an E4S container with the host MPI, creating custom containers for your application, using E4S on AWS and DOE facilities, and building applications using E4S with a bare-metal installation. He will highlight the use of E4S on Cori and answer questions about applying E4S to your projects.
Shahzeb Siddiqui will present an overview of E4S stacks installed at NERSC that will be a mix of hands-on and walkthrough the NERSC E4S Documentation. Participants are encouraged to follow the hands-on session if you have access to NERSC systems. We will conclude this session with an overview of E4S testing at NERSC and building a Spack Gitlab Pipeline for nightly builds of E4S.
Agenda:
- ST Overview (Mike Heroux)
- Introduction to E4S (Sameer Shende)
- Software Deployment at the Facilities (Ryan Adamson)
- E4S at NERSC (Shahzeb Siddiqui)
- Q&A
2021 HDF5 User Group Meeting
The 2021 HDF5 Users Group (HUG) will be held virtually on October 12-14, 2021. More information about the agenda and registration (required) can be found here.
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 October webinar is titled Migrating to Heterogeneous Computing: Lessons Learned in the Sierra and El Capitan Centers of Excellence, and will be presented by David Richards (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 1:00 pm ET.
Abstract:
The introduction of heterogeneous computing via GPUs from the Sierra architecture represented a significant shift in direction for computational science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and therefore required significant preparation. The Sierra Center of Excellence (COE) brought employees with specific expertise from IBM and NVIDIA together with LLNL in a concentrated effort to prepare applications, system software, and tools for the Sierra supercomputer. To prepare for El Capitan, a new COE is currently operating in collaboration with HPE and AMD. This webinar will describe the operation of these COEs and document lessons learned, with the hope that others will be able to learn from both our success and intermediate setbacks. We describe what we have found to be best practices for managing the vendor collaborations, migrating algorithms and source code, working with the system software stack and tools, and optimizing application performance.
Strategies for Working Remotely will be a topic of discussion in the next DOE Laboratories of the Future (LOTF) workshop. We hope you will join us!
DOE laboratories are globally recognized to be masters of science at scale, interdisciplinary research, and operating national user facilities. At the same time, the laboratory complex is entering its eighth decade of existence and retains vestiges of its World War II roots. As the stewards of this national treasure, it is our job to ensure the laboratories have the resources and structures to thrive for the next 70 years and beyond.
Purpose of Workshop: The next event in the DOE Laboratories of the Future (LOTF) workshop series will be focused on effective teaming across the DOE laboratories and how we can best integrate new tools and mechanisms for virtual collaboration. Panel speakers will address:
- How do decision-making teams work together effectively?
- How can virtual collaborative tools help stimulate innovative collaborations?
- What are strategies for working remotely at the national labs?
- What new models of collaborative teaming can be adopted?
Panelists:
-
Dr. Nancy Cooke, Arizona State University – Effective Teamwork for DOE Laboratories of the Future
Dr. Gary Olson, University of California, Irvine – Virtual Collaborative Scholarship
Dr. Elaine Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories – Strategies for Working Remotely
Dr. Francesca Poli, Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program – Championing New Models of Flexibility to Enhance Scientific Impact
Moderator:
- Susannah Howieson, Office of Strategic Planning and Interagency Coordination (SPAIC), Department of Energy
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 November webinar is titled 55+ years in High-Performance Computing: One Woman’s Experiences and Perspectives; it will include a Q&A session with Jean Shuler (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). The webinar will take place on Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 1:00 pm ET.
Abstract:
This HPC webinar will differ from others in the series. We will have a Q&A session with Jean Shuler, a woman who has worked at the leading edge of High-Performance Computing for more than 55 years. Jean graduated with a degree in Mathematics from William and Mary in 1963 and taught herself programming on the job at NASA Langley. By 1972, she came to LLNL where she has worked ever since. She initially worked on early data storage and graphics systems. Challenges in learning to use computing center resources gave Jean a passion for helping others find their way in HPC. She eventually led User Services for the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center. This role took Jean all over the world contributing to Cray User Group meetings. When NERSC moved from LLNL in 1996, Jean created and led the User Services Group for Livermore Computing. Throughout her career, Jean has supported various HPC systems from CDC, Cray, Meiko, and IBM on the march to Exascale. If you have an interest in computing history, the experiences and impact of women in computing or if you are early in your career and looking for some inspiration, you will want to attend this webinar and listen to Jean’s amazing career and stories.
