This is a two-part series to introduce participants to Git tools used for version control and collaborative development. Version control is the practice of managing and sharing changes to documents, programming code, websites or any other files to keep track of what’s been changed, by whom, when and why. All previous versions of files are saved and you can even revert to a previous version. Git is a version control software. Git-portal sites, like GitHub or GitLab, offer many useful features to facilitate collaborative development. This beginner level session introduces you to Git. We will show you how to create a repository, record changes to files, explore and restore from the recorded history and how to resolve conflicts (when one member overwrites another’s changes). This two-part series introduces participants to Git tools. The first session on December 1st focuses on version control. The second workshop on December 8th will explore using Git for collaborative development.  

This core session is designed to help new users at ACENET and Compute Canada get up and running. What is high performance computing (HPC) and what can it do for me? How can ACENET help? Used by researchers across many disciplines to tackle analyses too large or complex for a desktop, or to achieve improved efficiency over a desktop, this session takes participants through the preliminary stages of learning about high performance computing (HPC) and computing clusters, and how to get started with this type of computing. It then reviews software packages available for applications, data analysis, software development and compiling code. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of parallel computing to achieve much faster results in analysis. This session is designed for those with no prior experience in HPC, and are looking for an introduction and overview. This session will be delivered online. To get the most from ACENET basics, please register for a Compute Canada Account. To register contact your supervising professor, ask for their CCRI, then visit https://ccdb.computecanada.ca/account_application. If your professor is not registered with Compute Canada, please have them register, then follow up with you. In addition to a Compute Canada account, you will […]

This core session is designed to help new users at ACENET and Compute Canada get up and running. Linux is the terminal interface used to enable you to use the ACENET and Compute Canada HPC clusters from your desktop. It's the tool you need to get your data on the clusters, run your programs, and get your data back. In this session, learn how to get started with Linux, how to create and navigate directories for your data, load files, manage your storage, run programs on the computing clusters, and set file permissions. This workshop is designed for those with no prior experience in working with a terminal interface. This session will be delivered online. To get the most from ACENET basics, please register for a Compute Canada Account. To register contact your supervising professor, ask for their CCRI, then visit https://ccdb.computecanada.ca/account_application. If your professor is not registered with Compute Canada, please have them register, then follow up with you. In addition to a Compute Canada account, you will want a computer with Windows, MacOS X, or a Unix-based operating system (not a ChromeBook), and a stable internet connection. A registered account is not mandatory, just recommended to get the […]

This core session is designed to help new users at ACENET and Compute Canada get up and running. Participants will learn how to use shell scripting to exercise the power of the command line. Shell scripting helps you save time, automate file management tasks, and better use Linux. This session teaches you how to name, locate and set permissions for executable files, taking input and producing output. Learn about job scripts, shell variables and looping commands. This workshop is designed for either new HPC users who are familiar with working in a Linux environment, but have not had experience with shell scripting, or for experienced users seeking to get more out of shell scripting. In order to get the most from the session, participants are strongly encouraged to have a Compute Canada/ACENET account and to bring a laptop to do the exercises. This session will be delivered online. To get the most from ACENET basics, please register for a Compute Canada Account. To register contact your supervising professor, ask for their CCRI, then visit https://ccdb.computecanada.ca/account_application. If your professor is not registered with Compute Canada, please have them register, then follow up with you. In addition to a Compute Canada account, […]

This core session is designed to help new users at ACENET and Compute Canada get up and running. This session teaches participants how to use Compute Canada’s queuing environment on the national systems, using the job scheduler Slurm. Learn how the scheduler works, how it allocates jobs, what are reasonable requests to minimize wait time, how to make the best use of the resources to be more efficient, how to get more throughput, how to get more jobs running at the same time, and how to troubleshoot and deal with crashes. This workshop is designed for either new HPC users familiar with Linux and Shell Scripting, but who have not had experience with using Slurm, or, for experienced users transitioning to Slurm or seeking to improve efficiency with the scheduler. In order to get the most from the session, participants are strongly encouraged to have a Compute Canada/ACENET account and to bring a laptop to do the exercises. This session will be delivered online. To get the most from ACENET basics, please register for a Compute Canada Account. To register contact your supervising professor, ask for their CCRI, then visit https://ccdb.computecanada.ca/account_application. If your professor is not registered with Compute Canada, […]

This session provides an overview of Ansys Fluent and teaches participants how to use it to solve CFD problems. With advancements in computers and new generations of CPUs and GPUs, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is becoming an indispensable tool in many fields. Researchers and industrial design engineers are using CFD to predict and understand complex fluid flow and heat transfer problems, and to verify and optimize designs. Among open-source and commercial CFD packages, Ansys Fluent is one of the most popular commercial tools. In this workshop, you will learn how to set up a small problem and solve it in Ansys Fluent on your personal computer. The instructor will then demonstrate how to design and solve a large problem using a supercomputing cluster. No prior knowledge of Ansys Fluent is required. Participants must have a personal computer with administrative privileges to download software in order to do the exercise. This session will be delivered online. Participants must register using their institutional / organizational email address (not a personal email, ie. gmail). Connections details and preparation information will be shared prior to the session.

This workshop will be a hands-on introduction to the C programming language. Prerequisites: Familiarity with some other programming language A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to write user-defined functions for engineering packages such as Fluent, then this workshop is for you. You do need to have a laptop with a Mac, Linux or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc) on which you have administrative privileges, as you will need to pre-load specific software packages. Participants must register using their institutional / organizational email address (not a personal email, ie. gmail) Instructions for how to join will be sent out one day prior to the start of the event.

What do you need to need to make a machine learning project successful? How can you make smart decisions about setup and execution of a machine learning project? How should you hire and support the staff working on the project? We hope to provide clear, thoughtful answers to these, and other common questions to get you thinking about whether machine learning is a technology that you and your company or group should think about investing in. We will discuss topics like data collection, the trade-offs involved in choosing a model, and what to expect from a successful project, as well as how to salvage useful by-products and skills when projects don’t go as planned. This is a beginner session oriented to business owners and project managers curious to learn more about machine learning, or who may have an idea that involves machine learning and want to know where to begin. This session will take place on: Thursday, March 24th - 12:00pm - 2:00pm (Atlantic time) You do need to have a laptop with a Mac, Linux or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc). Participants must register using their institutional / organizational email address (not a personal email, ie. […]

Join ACENET for a brief introduction to Natural Language Processing (NLP). How do computers understand language? It seems impossible that zeroes and ones could ever add up to words that humans can understand, but machine language has come a long way in the past few years. Let us take you behind the code to explain how machines simulate language comprehension, and why it’s a far more complicated problem than “bonjour = hello”. This talk is aimed at an audience who is not necessarily familiar with computers or language comprehension, but would like a primer to the field, and what it can realistically do. We will explain natural language processing from the perspective of machines that cannot understand words, but capture semantic meaning by processing data. This session will take place on: Thursday, April 6th - 12:00pm - 3:00pm (Atlantic time) You do need to have a laptop with a Mac, Linux or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc) on which you have administrative privileges, as you will need to pre-load specific software packages. Participants must register using their institutional / organizational email address (not a personal email, ie. gmail) Instructions for how to join will be sent out […]

This workshop will be a hands-on introduction to the FORTRAN programming language. Prerequisites: Familiarity with another programming language Fortran, one of the initial high-level programming languages, continues to be an excellent option for high-performance computing due to its superb performance. The newer versions offer many modern features, including object-oriented programming capabilities to programmers. This course will cover some of these features. The session will take place on: Wednesday, May 4th - 12:00pm - 4:00pm (Atlantic time) You need to have a laptop with a Mac, Linux or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc) on which you have administrative privileges, as you will need to pre-load specific software packages. Participants must register using their institutional / organizational email address (not a personal email, ie. gmail) Instructions for how to join will be sent out one day prior to the start of the event.