Current NAISS Training Newsletter

Welcome to the last edition of the NAISS training newsletter in 2024.   In this edition we advertise the first set of training events in early 2025. We have training for new users of Alvis.   For new users of our infrastructure we recommend the introduction to Linux event and the Cluster architecture and job submission seminar. The Awk workshop and the Pandas course are geared towards users with needs in data handling and data processing.

We have scheduled the next NAISS Zoom-in for 6th February.

ENCCS asked us to share some of their events.

The NAISS training team wishes everyone a happy festive season.

NAISS training

• Online training seminar: Introduction seminar for Alvis users, 15 January 2025
• Online training workshop: "Awk workshop”, 16-17 January, 2025
• Online course: Introduction to Linux, 21 January 2025, 09:00-12:00
• Online training workshop: Basic Singularity Running and building Singularity containers - 13 February, 2025
• Online training seminar: Cluster architecture and job submission, 4 February 2025 at 13:30
• Online training course: Introduction to Pandas for data science, 13 - 14 May 2024

Online interactive support and discussion forum:

• NAISS Zoom-in - a virtual open-house, 6  February from 14:00 until 15:00

University events

• Online course: Introduction to Kebnekaise, 22 January 2025, 09:00-17:00

ENCCS training

• Online workshop: High-Performance Data Analytics with Python (online), 21 - 23 January
• Online workshop: Julia for High-Performance Data Analysis (Online), 4 - 7 February
• Publicly available training material
• Training events from around Europe

NAISS training

Online training seminar: Introduction seminar for Alvis users, 15 January 2024

Description: This seminar is for new and prospective users of the NAISS cluster for AI/ML, Alvis. You will learn all that you need to know to get started on the system.

Time: January 15 13:15-15:00

Registration: https://indico.chalmers.se/event/184/

Online training workshop: "Awk workshop” - 16-17 January, 2025

Collaboration between UPPMAX and NBIS

Awk is an interpreted programming language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool.

This two-day workshop aims to promote and demonstrate the flexibility of the tool, where the overhead of more sophisticated approaches and programming languages is not worth the bother.

Learn how to

• use Awk as an advanced grep command, capable of arithmetic selection rules with control over the content of the matched lines
• perform simple conversions, analysis or filter you data on the fly making it easy to plot or read in your favorite research tool
• handle and take advantage of data split over multiple file data sets
• use Awk as simple function or data generator
• perform simple sanity checks on your results

The workshop aims to promote the awk tool for use in everyday research work and urges you to find solutions yourself rather than expecting ready-made ones. The material given during the seminar will not be a complete guide or a manual but rather an overview of the capabilities, particular strengths, and common disadvantages.

When: 16-17, January, 2025

Where: online via Zoom

Registration form: https://forms.gle/Hz1mQJSiA6ewfLqz8

For more information and registration, please visit: https://www.uu.se/en/centre/uppmax/study/courses-and-workshops/awk-workshop

Online course: Introduction to Linux, 21 January 2025, 09:00-12:00

This 3-hour online course is an introduction to the Linux operating system (OS) that is used on most Swedish compute clusters, and is the most common OS in HPC clusters all over the planet. The course will consist of lectures, code-alongs, and interspersed exercises.

This NAISS course is meant for beginners to the Linux operating system, and is open to all users in Swedish academia.

Time and date: 21 January 2025, 09:00-12:00

More information and registration on the course website: https://www.hpc2n.umu.se/events/courses/2025/spring/linux-intro

Online training workshop: Basic Singularity Running and building Singularity containers - 13 February, 2025

Collaboration between UPPMAX and HPC2N

The online workshop is an introduction to the basic concepts of containerized software environment solutions within the Singularity framework https://sylabs.io/singularity/.

During the workshop you will have the opportunity to follow the interactive guide on

• how to run Singularity containers
• how to build your own
• good (and bad) practices on designing and building Singularity recipes
• build and/or host container remotely and what are the limitations

To fully benefit from the workshop, basic Linux system administration experience is highly desirable i.e. knowledge of package management and common tools for building and managing software: git, pip, conda, wget, curl, …

Please follow the instructions at https://pmitev.github.io/UPPMAX-Singularity-workshop/installation/ to install Singularity on your computer before the workshop.

When: 13 February, 2025

Where: online via Zoom

Registration form: https://forms.gle/2mgKujuzwKxQskhX6

For more information and registration, please visit: https://www.uu.se/en/centre/uppmax/study/courses-and-workshops/basic-singularity

Online training seminar: Cluster architecture and job submission, 4 February 2025 at 13:30

This event explains key features of a contemporary HPC cluster, such as deployed at LUNARC and throughout NAISS.  It will explain the principles behind the job scheduler and how the scheduler can be used to accomplish your computational work in an efficient manner.  The examples will utilise the SLURM scheduler, which is deployed on the NAISS resources. 

The event is organised as an online seminar.  The seminar addresses users who have recently started using HPC systems and prospective users considering using an HPC system in the near future. 

Time: 4 February at 13:30

For more information and registration visit: https://www.lunarc.lu.se/learning-more/training-courses/cluster-architecture-and-job-submission-27-february-2024/

Online training course: Introduction to Pandas for data science, LUNARC, 11 - 12 February 2025

Pandas is a powerful, popular Python package for cleaning, manipulating, and statistically analyzing large tabular data sets.  It is particularly useful in preparation for AI/ML applications and publication-ready visualization. Originally developed for financial panel data, it is now used by data scientists in a huge variety of fields, from marketing to medicine to astronomy.  Pandas is capable of handling data sets of several Gigabytes.

This course will introduce the core Pandas data types, basic input/output routines, data selection and filtering, data inspection and cleaning methods, built-in and user-defined functions for data manipulation, hierarchical data structures, and some built-in visualization methods. There will be a mix of static examples and live demonstrations via Jupyter notebook, and exercises will be provided to complement the lecture materials.

For more information and access to registration, please visit https://www.lunarc.lu.se/learning-more/training-courses/introduction-to-pandas-for-data-science-11-12-february-2025/

Online interactive support and discussion forum:

NAISS Zoom-in - a virtual open-house, 6 February from 14:00 until 15:00

You are invited to a virtual meeting room.  Inside the meeting room we like to discuss services offered by NAISS and how they can be used for your computational needs, help you process your data and visualise your results.  Participants are highly encouraged to pose their own questions. 

We also expect to have experts available from C3SE, HPC2N and LUNARC, to discuss the University operated HPC services at Chalmers, Umeå and Lund University.

The zoom-link for the session will be announced closer to the event.

University events

Online course: Introduction to Kebnekaise, 22 January 2025, 09:00-17:00

In this course we begin with an introduction to HPC and HPC2N, before going on to a walk-through of the Kebnekaise system, including the newest hardware.

After that, we go through the module system and take a look at how to submit jobs. During the hands-on you will get the opportunity to try loading modules, compile a program, and submit a job to the Kebnekaise cluster. We will look at how to use both the different types of CPUs, and the different types of GPUs.

Eligibility: since Kebnekaise is no longer a NAISS cluster, this course in only available to local users. This is defined as users who are current or future members of projects with a PI affiliated with HPC2N's partner sites (UmU, SLU, LTU, MIUN, IRF). Participation is free.

Time and date: 22 January 2025, 09:00-17:00

More information and registration on the course website: https://www.hpc2n.umu.se/event/seminar/2025/spring/kebnekaise-intro

ENCCS training

Online workshop: High-Performance Data Analytics with Python (online), 21 - 23 January

Abstract: This three half-day online workshop is meant to give an overview of working with research data in Python using general libraries for storing, processing, analyzing and sharing data. The focus is on improving performance. After covering tools for performant processing (netcdf, numpy, pandas, scipy) on single workstations the focus shifts to parallel, distributed and GPU computing (snakemake, numba, dask, multiprocessing, mpi4py).

Detailed information at webpage: https://enccs.se/events/hpda-python-jan-25/

Time: Jan. 21-23, 09:00-12:00 (CET) (2025).

Online workshop: Julia for High-Performance Data Analysis (Online), 4 - 7 February

Abstract: This online workshop will start by briefly covering the basics of Julia’s syntax and features, and then introduce methods and libraries which are useful for analyzing and visualizing large datasets using dataframes and visualization packages.

Detailed information at webpage: https://enccs.se/events/julia-hpda-feb-25/

Time: Feb. 4-7, 09:00-12:00 (CET) (2025).

ENCCS also asked us to publicise their online training material overview

Publicly available training material:

ENCCS develops and maintains a library of training material on topics in HPC, AI and Quantum Computing which is suitable for self-paced learning. Find the library at https://enccs.se/lessons/.

Training events from around Europe

Many HPC centres and National Competence Centres around Europe offer diverse HPC training workshops open to anyone in Europe, many of which are online. Upcoming workshops can be found at https://hpc-portal.eu/upcoming-events-courses.