The focus of this workshop is to introduce the role of High Performance Computing in research. Learn how to scale your application to run on HPC Systems available to the MIT Community.

Description

The focus of this workshop is to introduce the role of High Performance Computing (HPC, aka supercomputing) in research. We will discuss the fields where HPC is used and provide concrete examples where we describe the strategies used to scale applications to hundreds of processors. Students will learn when to scale from their laptops to HPC, what challenges that introduces, and how to address those challenges with efficient HPC workflows. The MIT SuperCloud will be used for hands-on examples using C/C++, Julia, Matlab, and/or Python. We will also demonstrate applications using other computing resources on campus, such as the Satori and Engaging clusters. Students should bring an existing research problem/application that they would like to scale as a project.

This is a blended course with asynchronous and live components. Much of the lecture will be available before class in pre-recorded short videos and class time will be spent on hands-on activities and student research project work. Students taking the class for MIT credit are required to complete a short report on their project.

Students looking to take this class for credit should sign up for 12.091/12.391. Those interested in taking the class not for credit can send email to lauren.milechin@mit.edu.

Prerequisites

Working knowledge of one programming/scripting language. Laptop for hands-on exercises. Participants will get further instruction on how to access MIT Supercloud once registered for the class. Students should bring an existing research problem/application that they would like to scale as a project.