DECI 10 Project DNSTF - Initial Meeting - PDC

DECI 10 Project DNSTF - Initial Meeting
Michaela Barth (caela@kth.se)

The Partnership for Advance Computing in
Europe is the European HPC Research
Infrastructure
PRACE enables world-class science through large scale simulations
PRACE provides HPC services on leading edge capability systems
on a diverse set of architectures
PRACE operates six Tier-0 systems as a single entity including user
and application support
PRACE offers its resources through a single pan-European peer
review process
PRACE is providing services since August 2010
The first Tier-0 system available (Jugene) was at that time the
fastest Supercomputer in Europe, now replaced by JUQUEEN
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PRACE open calls
Tier-0 call for PRACE regular access – open every 6 months
get CPU time on one of the six PRACE Tier-0 systems
Those calls are complemented by rolling Preparatory access calls, open all year
round. Technical evaluations are every 3 months at defined cut-off dates.
- type A(Code scalability tests); maximum allocation period is 2 months
- type B(Code development and optimisation); maximum allocation period is 6 months
- type C(Code development and optimisation with the support of PRACE experts);
maximum allocation period is 6 months including up to 6 months expert help
scaling your code for Tier-0 systems
DECI (Tier-1) call for applications – open every 6 months
get both CPU time and expert help for up to 6 months on one of the many Tier-1
systems across PRACE partner countries.
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DECI – Tier 1 access all over Europe
The amount of allocations received in DECI compares to what is available on the national level.
→ DECI can be considered as an additional resource to what we already have within Sweden.
DECI offers a variety of different architectures across Europe. The amount of CPU time available
per DECI call is about 5% (12m CPU hours) of Lindgren@PDC which is the Swedish PRACE
resource. Over subscription is typically a factor 4.
DECI gives you the possibility to apply for up to 6 months PRACE expert enabling help on your
applications’ scalability.
Post Award obligations include a final report and acknowledgement of PRACE support.
Next DECI call: DECI 11 will open May 6 th and close June 10 th.
Computing access from November 1 st 2013.
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DECI Workflow
Experts from home site and exec site will be assigned to each
accepted DECI projects.
Home sites will need to arrange the initial meeting (visit/telcon) with
the PIs of the accepted DECI projects and explain all the necessary
information.
Home sites should report the outcome/progress after the initial
meeting with PIs.
Exec sites will inform the DECI users when their assigned systems
are available for their usage (after accounts are setup by WP6).
Exec sites should help users to install the software required which
are not available on the assigned systems.
Enabling sites should start the enabling assistance as soon as
possible and enabling experts should work in the close collaboration
with DECI users.

Initial Meeting
• X.509 Certificate (e.g. Terena e-Science)
• TTS: the PRACE support system of users (TTS)
• Available User Documentation
• Accessing the exec site and PRACE Common
Production Environment (PCPE)
• Accessing CPU accounting information via DART
• Final report and data collection
• Enabling help

X.509 Certificate
You need a valid certificate that you can use within PRACE:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/Certificates-FAQ
Currently the easiest way to get such a certificate is to go to
https://tcs-escience-portal.terena.org/
and request a Terena e-Science certificate.
If your university is connected and your personal identification flag in the
universities database is set, you'll get one immediately.
Otherwise: any standard X.509 certificate of a CA in the IGTF will do.
Please send the DN of the certificate to me afterwards so I can enter this
information in our LDAP tree.

Ticket Trouble Shooting
• Primary user interface via web-interface:
https://tts.prace-ri.eu/index.html
Secondary interface via email: support@prace-ri.eu
• Users should submit their queries to the PRACE TTS
directly (rather than send to a given person).

Available user documentation
• PRACE Best Practice Guide:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/Best-Practice-Guides
• PRACE User Documentation:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/User-Documentation
• Training Portal http://www.training.prace-ri.eu/
with many hours of video training material available

Access to the exec site
http://www.prace-ri.eu/Interactive-Access-to-HPC
Exec-site: Not assigned yet, currently assume
HeCToR@EPCC (a Cray XE6 system like Lindgren)
assigned Core-h (standardized) 8,437,500 (100%)
(corresponds to 6750000 on a Cray XE6)
Access details and specific Best Practice Guides
Exec site should provide you with local Allocation Policy

PCPE
PRACE Common Production Environment:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/PRACE-Common-Production
$ module load prace
Common workspace set-up:
$PRACE_ARCH – Architecture of local site
$PRACE_HOME – The home directory (in PRACE GPFS if installed
$PRACE_DATA – User’s data directory (in PRACE GPFS if installed
$PRACE_SCRATCH – Local scratch directory

CPU accounting information: DART
• DART http://www.prace-ri.eu/Accounting-Report-Tool
• DART documentation still on DEISA site:
http://www.deisa.eu/usersupport/user-documentation/deisa-accounting-report-tool
• (Not all centers automized yet: data added by hand
once a month.)

End of Project and Final Report
• The final reports are expected to be submitted within 3
months after the project completion.
– Independent from eventual extensions!!
– Template will be provided. (2-4 pages)
– e.g Template for DECI7:
http://www.pdc.kth.se/~caela/DECI/Guidelinesfinalreport.pdf
http://www.pdc.kth.se/~caela/DECI/DECI-template-report.doc
• Data should be collected within 3 months after the
project completion.

Enabling help
• T7.2-2IP (DECI application support) can provide to help with
enabling/optimising their applications.
– help DECI users to get access to their assigned Tier-1 systems
– Providing assistances with porting code to the systems.
• Applications enabling for the accepeted DECI projects which require more
than 1 month enabling work in their application forms.
– The enabling work is usually 1-6 months which involves performance
optimisation, scalability enabling, and other parallelisation related
technical work.
• Support if there is any request from DECI projects, as informed by WP2.
(WP2 is responsible for the DECI projects progress tracking.)
• Efforts needed for this DECI project confirmed with PI?

Enabling procedure
The assigned expert at the exec or home site:
• Assures that user(s) have their accounts
• Installs the requested software if these are not available at the exec
site
• Helps the user(s) to compile and run their code(s)
• Works on the code parallelization, scalability and optimization if
requested in the application form and indicated in DPMDB
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PRACE upcoming calls
Tier-0 Preparatory access (PA) call is constantly open, but next cut-off date will be
3 rd of June!
It will feature additional 150 PMs of expert help to scale your code for Tier-0. These
efforts are leftovers reactivated from the first implementation phase of PRACE
(1IP). They have to be spent until December 2013.
Extra-special for those interested to test a MIC architecture:
The 2IP Prototype system EURORA at CINECA (Intel Sandy Bridge, 16 GB DDR3,
1600 MHz) will be upgraded with Intel Xeon Phi cards, so that 64 of its nodes will
have Xeon Phi cards inside (the other 64 have already Kepler GPU cards) and will
be one of the PA systems available.
CINCECA will run a Xeon Phi Summer School 8-13 of July.
Those interested should also check out the PRACE Intel Xeon Phi BestPractice Guide
currently being improved.
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Preparatory Access A,B,C
Proposals for Preparatory Access only undergo technical assessment. This
assessment is forwarded to the Board of Directors that makes the decision of
allocations.
Applicants will be promptly informed about the outcome of their application.
The allocated resources are based on the recommendations of the technical
reviewers, available resources and the Board of Directors prioritization, and may differ
from those requested.
If expert support has been requested, applicants will be contacted by the assigned
expert.
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PRACE 8 th call: Tier-0 access March 2014 – March 2015
PRACE 8th call for applications will open in September 2013.
More information and application form can be found at:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/Call-Announcements
– Local experts can help you with the application form:
– PDC
• Michaela Barth caela@kth.se
– NSC
• Chandan Basu cbasu@nsc.liu.se
• Soon-Heum "Jeff" Ko sko@nsc.liu.se
– HPC2N
• Mikael Rännar mr@cs.umu.se
• Jerry Eriksson jerry@cs.umu.se
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Tier-0 application procedure
Guide for Tier-0 application procedure:
http://www.prace-ri.eu/How-to-apply
Proposals have to be submitted before the call deadline to be included in the peer
review process. After submission, proposals can still be unsubmitted, edited and
submitted again.
PRACE Peer review: includes both technical and scientific assessment.
If the reviewers have queries and/or raise issues regarding a proposal, the reviewer’s
report will be sent to the applicants for an opportunity to respond, correcting any
factual inaccuracies or providing any necessary further information in response to
issues that the reviewers may have raised.
Post Award obligations include a final report and acknowledgement of PRACE
support.
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