Learn to Use HPC Systems and Supercomputers (Complete Guide)

Course details

Welcome to the first High Performance Computing (HPC) systems course on the Udemy platform. I compiled here a total of one university semester worth of knowledge into an 1.5 hours long video course, and hence, it's a high-level overview which is the I way how designed this course. 

The goal main of this course is to introduce you with the HPC systems and its software stack. This course has been specially designed to enable you to utilize parallel & distributed programming  and computing resources to accelerate the solution of a  complex problem with the help of HPC systems and Supercomputers.  You can then use your knowledge in Machine learning, Deep learning, Data Sciences, Big data and so on.

A Little bit of Supercomputing history, Supercomputing examples, Supercomputers vs. HPC clusters, HPC clusters computers,Benefits of using cluster computing.

Components of a HPC system

Components of a High Performance Systems (HPC) cluster, Properties of Login node(s), Compute node(s), Master node(s), Storage node(s), HPC networks and so on.

PBS - Portable Batch System

Introduction to PBS, PBS basic commands, PBS `qsub`, PBS `qstat`, PBS `qdel` command, PBS `qalter`, PBS job states, PBS variables, PBS interactive jobs, PBS arrays, PBS Matlatb example

SLURM -Workload Manager

Introduction to Slurm, Slurm commands, A simple Slurm job, Slurm distrbuted MPI and GPU jobs, Slurm multi-threaded OpenMP jobs, Slurm interactive jobs, Slurm array jobs, Slurm job dependencies

Parallel programming - OpenMP and MPI

OpenMP basics, Open MP - clauses, worksharing constructs, OpenMP- Hello world!, reduction and parallel `for-loop`, section parallelization, vector addition, MPI - hello world! send/ receive and `ping-pong`

Parallel programming - GPU and CUDA

Finally, it gives you a concise beginner friendly guide to the GPUs - graphics processing units, GPU Programming - CUDA, CUDA - hello world and so on!

What is a HPC system?

HPC clusters typically have a large number of computers  (often called 'nodes') and, in general, most of these nodes would be configured identically. Though from the out side the cluster may look like a single system, the internal workings to make this happen can be quite complex. This idea should not be confused with a more general client-server model of computing as the idea behind clusters is quite unique. 

Benefits of using HPC

A cluster of computers joins computational powers of the compute nodes to provide a more combined computational power. Therefore, as in the client-server model, rather than a simple client making requests of one or more servers, cluster computing utilize multiple machines to provide a more powerful computing environment perhaps through a single operating system.

Don't forget to join our Q&A live community where you can get free help anytime from other students and the instructor. This awesome course is a component of the Learn Scientific Computing project.