---------------------------------------------------------------------- H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE H H P P C C -------------------------- HHHHH PPP C x x provided by H H P C C xx EPCC and H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx User Mailing 068 29 April 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents ** ScicomP11: Programme finalised ** HPCx life sciences workshop ** Course: Optimisation techniques for the Power4 processor ** Course: Improved performance scaling on HPCx ** Two new Technical Reports ** Phase 1 backups: LAST CALL!! ** Do you use the interactive queue? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings-- SCICOMP11: PROGRAMME FINALISED The full programme for ScicomP11, the IBM System Scientific Computing User Group to be held in Edinburgh from 31 May to 3 June, has been finalised. The programme comprises more than 30 talks, includes speakers from both IBM and the scientific user community, and covers a wide range of areas including Blue Gene, large-scale scientific applications, new IBM hardware and software, performance analysis, advanced user tools and parallel libraries. The meeting begins with a one-day tutorial on POWER5 Programming and Optimization. For full details see: www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/scicomp/program.htm Note that the early registration deadline is 7 May. It is important to register by this date to qualify for reduced rates and to gain access to our reserved hotel accommodation: Edinburgh can be a busy city during the tourist season. For further information and to register see: www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/scicomp/ ScicomP11 is co-located with the summer meeting of SP-XXL. Members of SP-XXL should register for this meeting via the ScicomP website above. We look forward to meeting you in Edinburgh this summer! The ScicomP11 Organising Committee scicomp@epcc.ed.ac.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx LIFE SCIENCES WORKSHOP Wednesday 18 May, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, 13.30 - 17.00 The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum in which to raise issues relating specifically to Life Sciences users of HPCx. Staff from HPCx will give brief talks about the HPCx service, and we also welcome presentations from users. However, the major aim will be to promote an open discussion about the HPCx service. This is an opportunity for Life Sciences users to discuss any problems at all relating to their research work on HPCx, including code performance, availability of software, batch queue configurations and data storage. If you are interested in attending then please email David Henty, d.henty@epcc.ed.ac.uk (HPCx Applications Suport Team Leader). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- COURSE: OPTIMISATION TECHNIQUES FOR THE POWER4 PROCESSOR Thursday 19 May, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory This course will focus on tools and techniques for single processor optimisation on HPCx. The course will cover the architecture of the processors and memory system, profiling and hardware counter tools, getting the best from the compilers and Power4-specific tips and tricks. Further information: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/HPCxOpt.html To register, please use the standard form: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/form.html How to get to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: http://www.cclrc.ac.uk/Activity/RALMaps/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- COURSE: IMPROVED PERFORMANCE SCALING ON HPCx Friday 20 May, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory This course will focus on tools and techniques for achieving optimal scaling on HPCx. The course will cover techniques for optimising inter and intra-node communication, such as: overlapping communication; cluster aware message passing; mixed mode programming and processor mapping. Further information: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/HPCxScale.html To register, please use the standard form: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/form.html How to get to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: http://www.cclrc.ac.uk/Activity/RALMaps/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TWO NEW TECHNICAL REPORTS These new HPCx Technical Reports are available from the usual page, at http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/research/hpc/ I/O Performance on the HPCx Phase 2 System ------------------------------------------ Michael Holden, Elena Breitmoser and Joachim Hein There were substantial changes to the architecture of HPCx during the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2. Since then a number of system software upgrades have been delivered. All of these had the potential to change the behaviour and performance of the platform. A number of I/O benchmarks that were run after the installation of SP7 were repeated following the installation of SP9. The results offer guidance on how to optimise the disk I/O of applications running on the service. Using VTK and the OpenGL Graphics Libraries on HPCx --------------------------------------------------- Jeremy Nowell Some of the graphics libraries and visualisation tools available on HPCx are described. Attention is given to the specifics of using the tools on HPCx rather than details of the tools themselves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 1 BACKUPS: LAST CALL!! People who were HPCx users at the time of our migration to the Phase 2 platform may remember that we made a special backup copy of all the files on the old Phase 1 platform before we copied everything across. This was done just in case any of the files failed to copy correctly. That was in June last year. The backup occupies more than 70 tapes, and as far as I know, none of them have ever been needed. We feel that if any files had failed to port correctly this would have been noticed by now. Accordingly, we propose to release these tapes for other uses in the first week in May, that is, NEXT WEEK. If you need to refer to these tapes, the FINAL DEADLINE is 5pm on Tuesday, 3 May. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DO YOU USE THE INTERACTIVE QUEUE? Jobs which are put in the interactive queue are run on a special node, which is reserved for this purpose. Please note that it should be used only for jobs which really need to be interactive, such as debugging runs or visualisations. It shouldn't be used for production work. Bear in mind that this single node is shared between all users who want to do these things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards --John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Earlier mailings: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/notices/index.html To be removed from the mailing list: log into your website account, go to the "Update" page, and click the "Opt out of user emails" field; then click "Commit update". -- John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555