Local supercomputing training in the computational sciences using remote national centers

• Authors: Floyd B. Hanson
• Venue: Future Generation Computer Systems - Special issue: Selected papers from the workshop on education in computational sciences held at the ICCS 2002
• Year: 2003

Local training for high performance computing using remote national supercomputing centers is quite different from training at the centers themselves or using local machines. The local site computing and communication resources are a fraction of those available at the national centers. However, training at the local site has the potential of training more computational science and engineering students in high performance computing by including those who are unable to travel to the national center for training. The experience gained from supercomputing courses and workshops in the last 17 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago is described. These courses serve as the kernel in the program for training computational science and engineering students. Many training techniques are illustrated, such as key local user's guides and starter problems that would be portable to other local sites. Training techniques are continually evolving to keep up with rapid changes in supercomputing. An essential feature of this program is the use of real supercomputer time on several supercomputer platforms at national centers with emphasis in solving large scale problems.