PACS Team Creates Online Course

released 11.07.03

Contact

Kathryn L. Kelley External Relations Ohio Supercomputer Center kkelley@osc.edu 614.292.6067

COLUMBUS, OH — Scientists from National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Boston University, the University of Kentucky, and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) have created an online Performance Tuning on Clusters course.

The institutions are members of the PACS Alliance (Partners for Advanced Computational Services) Training Group. NCSA's Ian Brooks led the course development team.

"In the PACS Training group, we have great breadth in expertise and experience," said Leslie Southern, PACS Training Group Lead. "The Alliance community embraced cluster computing and set the standards for academia and industry alike—and this course is a product of that leadership."

The course developers looked to their sites' experiences with cluster computing when selecting the topics for the course. The topics are not only theoretical, but also practical in nature.

The online tutorial, located at http://webct.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8900/public/PTCLUST/, includes:

• Cache Tuning


• Timing & Profiling


• General Tuning Techniques


• Architecture Dependent Techniques


• Cluster Issues


• Optimizing Parallelism for Cluster Architectures


• Compiler Flag Summary for Intel Compiler Suite (Appendix)


• Compiler Flag Summary for Portland Group Compiler Suite (Appendix)

"We wanted to develop an online tutorial that would enable users to maximize their time and efforts on their clusters, especially when parallel processing. Based upon initial feedback on the course, we have accomplished that goal," said Southern.

For more information, contact Southern at 614-292-9367.