Purdue University

Purdue will host a workshop in September for Purdue and non-Purdue students, staff and faculty looking to gain skills using MPI to leverage the power of cutting-edge computational resources, such as Purdue’s community clusters.

The two-day workshop will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 3 and 4 in the Envision Center, Stewart Center, Room B001, which is located off the tunnel between the Stewart Center and the Purdue Memorial Union. Space is limited, so participants should register soon. There is no cost to register. The National Science Foundation and ITaP are sponsoring the event.

Participants register with the National Science Foundation Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), in which Purdue is a partner. A free XSEDE account can be created on the XSEDE user portal at [portal.xsede.org]https://web.archive.org/web/20220820025648/https://portal.xsede.org/).

The mini course, which includes hands-on lab sessions, is designed to give C and Fortran programmers an introduction to MPI programming in a Linux environment. Participants should gain a working knowledge of how to write codes using MPI, the standard programming tool of scalable parallel computing. Purdue is one of 10 sites hosting the MPI workshop internationally and the only site in Indiana.

The MPI workshop is delivered nationwide using high-definition video conferencing to allow students to interact in real time with course instructors from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and to work in person with local colleagues and experts. At Purdue, staff from ITaP Research Computing will be on hand.

Stephen Harrell, the scientific application analyst who coordinates training for ITaP Research Computing, says the MPI workshop is just one of the research computing training events on tap at Purdue in coming months, including:

• Using Linux and Purdue’s Community Cluster Program high-performance computing systems, Sept. 8. Topics covered will range from batch submission tools and running jobs to file backups and storage.

• Parallel Programming and Optimization with Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessors, Oct. 6 (seminar) and Oct. 7 (hands-on lab), sponsored by ITaP and Intel. Introductory seminar on using Intel’s Phi accelerators to speed research codes. Register here for the Oct. 6 seminar, and for the Oct. 7 lab register here. The seminar is a pre-requisite for the lab.

For more information, email rcac-help@purdue.edu.