---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 079 9 August 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents ** Capability incentives ** New beta release of NAMD ** August courses in Edinburgh ** EPCC Workshop: Blue Gene and QCDOC: Next Generation of HPC Architecture ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings-- CAPABILITY INCENTIVES The justification for the existence of HPCx is to enable people to do work which can only run on such a large system. Part of our mission, however, is to help people to develop their computational science so that they can take advantage of resources like HPCx, both now and in the future. The capability incentives are part of that programme. The idea is that codes which scale well to large numbers of processors are run at a discount - that is, you are charged for fewer AUs than you have actually used. Discounts can go as high as 30%. A description of the scheme can be found here: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/documentation/capability.html If you would like to know more about this, please get in touch with the helpdesk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW BETA RELEASE OF NAMD We have installed the beta 1 release of the forthcoming NAMD 2.6 on the service machine. Please have a look at http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/2.6b1/announce.html for the key advantages over the current NAMD, version 2.5. Using the NAMD APO-A1 benchmark the HPCx support team have observed a speedup of around 15% for NAMD 2.6b1 over NAMD 2.5. If you are a registered user of NAMD, you can find the new executable namd2-6b1 in the usual directory. (The old version is still available.) If you are interested in NAMD but have not yet registered to access it, you should contact the helpdesk. The developers emphasise that this is a beta release. Users should be cautious about teething problems and other bugs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AUGUST COURSES IN EDINBURGH We're running three courses at EPCC in August - see below. All we take place at the EPCC in Edinburgh, and are free for UK-based academics. Please note that this is the festival season in Edinburgh, a very busy time, so if you are coming and need somewhere to stay overnight, you'd be well advised to book as soon as possible. Here is a list of places to stay in the vicinity: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/contact_us/accommodation/ For links to the various Festival sites, see below. To register for these courses, please use the standard registration form: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/form.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTRODUCTION TO HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING Monday, August 22, 2005 at EPCC, Edinburgh Further details: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/HPCconcep ts_summary.html Note that only material from the first day will be covered. JAVA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING Tuesday-Wednesdya, August 23-24, 2005 at EPCC, Edinburgh Further details: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/OOforHPC_ summary.html Note that only material from the days 2 and 3 will be covered. PRACTICAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Monday-Thursdy, August 29-September 1 2005 at EPCC Edinburgh Further details: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/SoftDev_s ummary.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE EDINBURGH FESTIVALS The Edinburgh International Festival: http://www.eif.co.uk/ The Edinburgh Festival Fringe: http://www.edfringe.com/ The Edinburgh Tattoo: http://www.edinburgh-tattoo.co.uk/index.html The Edinburgh Film Festival: http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk The Edinburgh Book Festival: http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EPCC WORKSHOP: BLUE GENE AND QCDOC: NEXT GENERATION OF HPC ARCHITECTURE National e-Science Centre, Edinburgh Tuesday-Thursday, 4-6 October, 2005 The first IBM e-Server Blue Gene system in Europe was delivered to EPCC in December 2004. The University of Edinburgh has also recently installed a QCDOC machine, providing one of the world's most powerful systems dedicated to the numerical investigation of Quantum Chromodynamics. The Blue Gene and QCDOC architectures offer a significant breakthrough in supercomputing technology, providing unprecedented computing performance coupled with very low power consumption, floor space and cost. With the growing popularity of these systems, across a wide range of applications, a workshop investigating their full potential is highly topical. As the only centre in the world to host both a Blue Gene and a QCDOC system, the University of Edinburgh is the ideal location for such a workshop. The workshop will be sponsored by IBM, and hosted by EPCC at the National e-Science Centre, Edinburgh, UK. The programme comprises a series of presentations from experts users, developers and programmers. Registration for this event is free. For further details and to register, please go here: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/BGworkshop/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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