HPC Introduction

This course is dedicated to beginners in High Performance Computing. No previous knowledge of HPC and even UNIX is required. The DTU HPC system is presented, together with the tools to be able to use it. After the course, the user will be able to use the HPC resources interactively, and submit batch jobs. An introductory overview of parallelization, and how to run parallel programs of the HPC is also part of the program.

List of Topics

1. Introduction to High Performance computing

  • Where does the need for HPC come from?

    • A few examples from DTU

    • HPC: specialized hardware or cluster of “commodity hardware”?

2. HPC cluster at DTU: interactive usage

  • Overview of the system, hardware and software.

  • Multi-user environment:

    • What you get, your share of resources

    • How to login: Graphical User Interface and/or Command Line

    • Interactive usage: running programs, command line basics

  • Hands-on

3. HPC cluster at DTU: batch jobs

  • Running programs on the HPC: the Resource Manager, the idea behind batch jobs.

  • Job script:

    • Preparing a job script

    • Submitting a job

    • Managing jobs

  • Hands-on

4. Simple introduction to Parallelization

  • Basic overview on parallelism, Parallel programming models:

    • Distributed, shared

    • General concepts: communication, costs, parallel overhead, balancing

  • Running parallel programs on HPC

  • Examples