Winter Research Computing Bootcamp starts January 20
IST's popular Python and HPC workshops are back. Winter Research Computing Bootcamp starts January 20! All winter workshops will be held online and there is no cost to attend.
Interested in more research computing resources? Check out the Research Computing page to see our list of services and to access video recordings from past bootcamps.
Research Computing Bootcamp Schedule
January 2023
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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9
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10
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11
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12
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13
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16
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17
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18
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19
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20
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23
9 am–12:30 pm
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24
9 am–12 noon
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25
9–11 am
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26
9 am–12 noon
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27
9 am–12 noon
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30
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31
9 am–12 noon
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February 2023
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
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1
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2
9 am–12 noon
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3
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6
9 am–12 noon
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7
9 am–12 noon
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8
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9
9 am–12 noon
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10
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13
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14
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15
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16
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17
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20
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21
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22
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23
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24
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27
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28
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See something you like? Register below! Please only sign up for a bootcamp if you are confident you can attend.
Introduction to the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and Bootcamp overview
Date: Friday, January 20, 2023
Time: 10–11 am
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
Not sure which Bootcamp sessions to take? Wondering how your particular research project fits into the Alliance? This is an open space to ask these and similar questions.
The first 30 minutes of the workshop is a high-level overview of what is offered to researchers by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada ("the Alliance"), the workshops in the bootcamp series, and how the bootcamps set researchers up to use the Alliance. The second 30 minutes of the workshop is open time for questions.
HPC: Shell Basics
Date: Monday, January 23, 2023
Time: 9 am–12:30 pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
This 3.5-hour workshop will introduce you to the basic interface for using a High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment: the Linux Shell, a command line environment. You will learn how to log in to a remote HPC machine and perform common common tasks, including moving through directories, viewing files, and moving files on and off the system.
This is a version of the face-to-face workshop that we run regularly that has been truncated slightly to account for some inefficiencies of the online environment. Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Scripting Basics
Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Time: 9–11 am
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
In this 2-hour, direct follow-up to HPC: Shell, we will spend additional time looking at writing scripts within the Linux Shell as part of automating tasks. You will learn more about writing and using scripts to get your work done, including how to write loops, and how to generalize your scripts by allowing them to take inputs directly from the command line.
This workshop will not cover the mechanics of submitting work to the HPC clusters via scripts but is instead an optional preparatory workshop for HPC: Essentials, which covers this. Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Essentials
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2023
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
This is the second workshop in the series designed to move researchers from no previous experience using high performance computing (HPC) clusters towards a position of confidence and competence. This workshop focuses on the mechanics of submitting programs (aka “jobs”) to the clusters so that they can be scheduled and run.
Led by Kamil Marcinkowski, scheduling team lead for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, this workshop will contain extra emphasis on interacting with the scheduler to ensure that your work is getting done rather than sitting in the queue. This workshop provides that background in a friendly, jargon-minimized, hands-on environment.
HPC: Parallelism
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2023
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Are you having a hard time understanding parallel computing and High Performance Computing (HPC) including terms like thread, process, job, vector processor, core, CUDA, MPI, and many more?
This session will provide you with a map to understand parallel computing, descriptions of the terms and concepts, and how they relate to each other. Like any good map, it will let you know which concepts and terms you need to know in greater detail, and how they relate to what you are trying to do. With this map in hand you will be in a better position to decide when and how to take advantage of the parallel computing architectures that are available to you.
This workshop will include a simple and practical live demonstration running and viewing different types of parallel programs/concepts on an HPC cluster.
HPC: Interactive Tuning & Debugging
Date: Friday, January 27, 2023
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Your research has gone beyond the capabilities of your laptop and you're now getting started with the cluster. Now what? How do you figure out what resources your jobs need on the cluster? What do you do when things go wrong?
This workshop will share secrets of interactive cluster usage so you can schedule work efficiently, learn how to fix problems when things go wrong, and use the system for interactive code development. High performance computing (HPC) clusters are composed of Linux machines, understanding and controlling work on a cluster is an extension of the skills in doing the same on a Linux machine.
You will learn how to debug by telling how many resources (memory, open files, disk IO, Iops, etc.) and how much network traffic a program uses.
Introduction to Python (four-part series)
Dates
- Tuesday, January 31, 2023
- Thursday, February 2, 2023
- Tuesday, February 7, 2023
- Thursday, February 9, 2023
Time: 9 am–12 noon daily
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
This is a 12-hour introductory online workshop (three hours a day over four days) on using the Python programming language, with a particular focus on data analysis using the Pandas library and plotting. No previous programming experience assumed—this course starts with the absolute basics.
Either Python or Jupyter must be installed on your own computer, or a cloud based Jupyter environment can be used. If you do not have a version of Python and are not sure where to start, follow these instructions for your operating system.
Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming.
Research Solutions Marketplace
Date: Monday, February 6, 2022
Time: 10 am–12 noon
Location: GSB 2-10 (Green Space in IST)
Facilitator: Research support professionals from across campus
Research computing on campus is supported by a number of different people and organizations, so deploying new or suitably complicated projects can be difficult to coordinate.
This session uses a drop-in “speed networking” format designed to facilitate several quick conversations to discover common challenges and share the things that can help you get your research done. You’ll also meet library staff involved in supporting research data management and learn about what they offer and be able to quickly scaffold together a plan for deploying your research.
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