Introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC)

Laptop

2 CPU Cores (standard 3.3Ghz, Turbo Boost 3.6Ghz)

8 Gb RAM

500Gb Disk

Users: 1

Workstation

12 CPU Cores (standard 2.6Ghz, Turbo Boost 3.5Ghz)

64 Gb RAM

2Tb Disk

Users: 1

Workstation

The expensive Workstation is slower!

Workstation

Good news: You can use it just like you used your laptop (1 user)

Bad news: You need to use parallel programming to access all of it's power

Think Parallel

Supercomputer

Not a big single computer. Lots of connected computers.

Each 'sub computer' is called a node.

Nodes are fully independent computers.

Sheffield - ShARC

120 Nodes

Standard nodes: 16 CPU cores @ 2.4Ghz and 64Gb RAM

Big memory nodes: 16 CPU cores @ 2.4 Ghz and 768Gb RAM

1920 cores in total

Users: 100s

Problem 1

Even slower clock speed!

Solution: Think parallel

Problem 2

Multiple nodes

Solution: Advanced parallel programming

Problem 3

100s of users

Solution: Queue system and batch processing

Problem 4

Making all this work!

Solution: Linux operating system

Problem 5

Learning how to use it

Solution: This session