Cray XE6 Performance Workshop @ EPCC

The Cray Centre of Excellence for HECToR and EPCC will deliver this course on the Cray XE6 and Multicore programming over three days.  It will introduce new and existing users to the more powerful and advanced features of the hardware and software stack available. 

The first day is a general introduction to modern HPC architectures and programming techniques, with practical examples done on the Cray XE6.

The second and third days focus on hardware and software issues specific to the Cray XE6, including a detailed overview of the "Interlagos" Opteron processor architecture, the Gemini network interconnect, Cray systems software and performance tools.

It is possible to register for all 3 days, or day 1 only, or days 2 and 3 only.

The programme will include:

• An overview of modern HPC architectures.
• Using multi-core processors.
• Modern memory systems.
• Caching and performance issues.
• A detailed overview of the "Interlagos" Opteron processor architecture and Gemini network interconnect.
• Details on using the Interlagos cores in fully populated or core-pair mode.
• Demonstrations of the additional flexibility and functionality available with the Cray MPI library:
  • Methods for customising the placement of ranks and processes to improve individual application communication performance.
  • Mechanisms for improving the overlap between communication and computation within an application.
  • Using and optimising MPI-IO for efficient file system performance.
• Guidance on use of Cray supplied optimisations of the standard installed scientific libraries.
• Tutorials on analysis tools, CrayPAT including the new Reveal tool.
• Guided tutorial and practical session on the Totalview debugging tool covering advanced features like:
  • Advanced memory debugging
  • Replayengine - reverse debugging
  • Automatic debugging through the use of scripts
• General tips and tricks from the Cray Centre of Excellence for HECToR on optimising applications on Cray architectures.

Attendees would benefit from experience with or an interest in Cray hardware. There will also be many opportunities for attendees to discuss their applications with members of EPCC and the Cray Centre of Excellence. The organisers encourage attendees to make their own applications available for testing during practical sessions.

This course is funded by the PRACE project and is free to all.

Pre-requisite programming languages: Knowledge of Fortran, C or C++, and MPI would be benefiicial.  It is not possible to do the exercises in Java.

Registering
Please register at: https://events.prace-ri.eu/conferenceDisplay.py?confid=92

Draft timetable

Day 1 - An Introduction to Multi-core programming

10:00 Modern HPC architectures
10:30 Multicore processors
11:00 COFFEE
11:30 Multicore practical
12:00 Hybrid MPI/OpenMP programming
12:30 Hybrid practical
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 Memory and cache hierarchies
14:45 Memory practical
15:30 TEA
16:00 Cache coherency and NUMA issues
17:00 Cache practical
17:30 CLOSE

Day 2 - Understanding and Optimising HECToR's Cray Environment

09:30 Lectures: Overview to the Cray XE6 Hardware
11:00 COFFEE
11:30 Lectures: Advanced use of the Cray Performance Analysis Toolkit
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 Lectures: Optimising communication for the Cray XE6
15:30 TEA
16:00 Open Session/Discussion: Case studies and tips and tricks
17:30 CLOSE

Day 3 - Advanced Features of HECToR's Environment 

09:30 Lectures: Introduction to the Cray Scientific libraries
11:00 COFFEE
11:30 Lectures: Optimising I/O on the Cray.
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 Lectures: Advanced debugging with Totalview
15:30 TEA
16:00 Practical: Advanced debugging with Totalview
17:30 CLOSE