Introduction to High Performance Computing: All in One View

Last updated on 2025-09-25 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

How do you write a lesson using Markdown and sandpaper?

Objectives

Explain how to use markdown with The Carpentries Workbench
Demonstrate how to include pieces of code, figures, and nested challenge blocks

Introduction

This is a lesson created via The Carpentries Workbench. It is written in Pandoc-flavored Markdown for static files and R Markdown for dynamic files that can render code into output. Please refer to the Introduction to The Carpentries Workbench for full documentation.

What you need to know is that there are three sections required for a valid Carpentries lesson:

questions are displayed at the beginning of the episode to prime the learner for the content.
objectives are the learning objectives for an episode displayed with the questions.
key points are displayed at the end of the episode to reinforce the objectives.

Challenge

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R

paste("This", "new", "lesson", "looks", "good")

Output

OUTPUT

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

Show me the solution

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

You can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

One of our episodes contains $\LaTeX$ equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: $\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$

Cool, right?

Key Points

Use .md files for episodes when you want static content
Use .Rmd files for episodes when you need to generate output
Run sandpaper::check_lesson() to identify any issues with your lesson
Run sandpaper::build_lesson() to preview your lesson locally

Content from Introduction to HPC Systems

Last updated on 2025-09-25 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

Did you know you have to have this question section?

Objectives

Describe the purpose of an HPC system and what it does
Differentiate between characteristics and features of HPC and cloud-based systems
List the benefits for using an HPC system
Identify how an HPC system could benefit you
Summarise the typical arrangement of an HPC system’s components
Summarise the capabilities of the NOCS HPC facilities
Summarise the key capabilities of IRIDIS5/6/X for NOCS applications
Summarise key capabilities of national HPC resources and how to access them

Lesson content goes here

Key Points

You need a list of key points

Content from Accessing and Using HPC Resources

Last updated on 2025-09-25 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

Did you know you have to have this question section?

Objectives

Summarise the process for applying for access to IRIDIS / OpenOnDemand
Summarise how access to HPC systems is typically secured
Describe how to connect to an HPC system using an SSH client program
Describe how to transfer files to and from an HPC system over an SSH connection
Summarise best practices for managing generated research data
Explain how the shell environment changes when the module mechanism loads or unloads packages

Lesson content goes here

Key Points

You need a list of key points

Content from Introduction to Job Scheduling

Last updated on 2025-09-25 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

Did you know you have to have this question section?

Objectives

Describe briefly what a job scheduler does
Summarise how to query the available resources on an HPC system
Describe a minimal job submission script and parameters that need to be specified
Summarise how to submit a batch job and monitor it until completion
Contrast when to run programs on an HPC login node vs running them on a compute node
Summarise the process for requesting and using an interactive job

Lesson content goes here

Key Points

You need a list of key points

Content from Introduction to Programmatic Parallelism

Last updated on 2025-09-26 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

Did you know you have to have this question section?

Objectives

Describe the concept of parallelisation and its significance in improving performance
Compare and contrast the operations and benefits of shared and distributed memory systems
Differentiate between parallelising programs via processes and threads
Define a race condition and how to avoid them

Lesson content goes here

Key Points

You need a list of key points

Content from Introduction to HPC Technologies

Last updated on 2025-09-25 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

Did you know you have to have this question section?

Objectives

Differentiate at a high level between the features of OpenMP, MPI, CUDA and AI/ML approaches and what they are used for
Briefly summarise the main OpenMP compiler directives and what they do
Describe how to compile and run an OpenMP program
Briefly summarise the main MPI message-passing features and how they are used
Describe how to compile and run an MPI program
Describe the advantages and drawbacks for using a hybrid OpenMP/MPI approach
Briefly summarise how a CUDA program is written
Describe why code scalability is important when using HPC resources
Describe the differences between strong and weak scaling
Summarise the dangers of premature optimisation

Lesson content goes here

Key Points

You need a list of key points