From your laptop to supercomputers
By the end of this workshop, you’ll understand:
From human calculators to digital machines
A programmable machine that follows instructions
Modern computers excel at:
What computers still can’t do:
Even AI has these limitations - it needs training data and still makes assumptions
The essential parts every computer needs:
Server-grade CPUs
Additional parts for specific tasks:
Activity: Share your laptop specs with a neighbor - what operating system, CPU, and RAM do you have?
CPU: Complex tasks, few at a time
GPU: Simple tasks, many at once
Activity: Look up whether your research workflows could benefit from GPU acceleration
When one computer isn’t enough…
HPC = Many computers working together as one powerful system
Four types of nodes (computers) in an HPC cluster:
Activity: Find examples of UK HPC systems (hint: King’s has CREATE!)
The power of working together
Perfect for parallel processing:
Activity: Discuss with your table - what workflows might you run in parallel?
Think of it like a restaurant queue manager
We’ll use Slurm scheduler in this workshop
A job = A unit of work for the HPC system
A job script = Instructions telling the system:
Think of it as a recipe for your computation
Three ways to manage software on HPC:
Modules: Load/unload software packages
module spider python
- search for softwareContainers: Portable, complete environments
Virtual Environments: Isolated Python setups
Activity: Think about what software packages you would like to use on the HPC. Which of these management approaches would you expect to use to manage them?
Be a good HPC citizen:
squeue
, sacct
Essential HPC vocabulary:
Your HPC journey continues with:
Resources:
The material in this course was inspired by / based on the following resources