Author: Terrance Figy

The third OAK Supercomputing Conference will be held at Wichita State University between May 20-23. Full details are available on the conference website. The program includes scientific talks, poster presentations and hands-on workshops. Special workshops offered include: Deep Learning by NVIDIA and MATLAB by MathWorks.

The conference is being co-organized with the fourth national High-Performance Computing Security Workshop, May 20-21.

The OAK conference and the HPC Security Workshops are open to all level of participants (faculty, researchers, HPC/IT admins and students and industry). The goal is to bring together the HPC users to lower the barrier of entry to HPC for folks who do not have access to it. Topics include High Performance and High Throughput Computing (HPC/HTC), Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Data Analytics and Data Visualization, and Internet of Things (IoT). Slots for podium talks and poster presentations are available (see the websites for more details).

The conference and workshop are available at no charge, but registrations are required (separately for the OAK Conference and HPC Security Workshop). The events will be held in-person on WSU’s campus to promote interaction and collaboration (see conference website for lodging information).

Travel funding available: Limited funding is available to support travel. Participants from emerging/smaller institutions and under-represented groups are specially encouraged to apply.

Join the High Performance Computing (HPC) monthly workshop, “GPU programming using OpenACC,” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, June 29 in EE 264 John Bardo Center. This workshop — brought to Wichita State by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and sponsored by Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) — will focus on accelerating coding skills and unleashing the power of GPU programming with OpenACC.

OpenACC is the industry-standard method for developing GPU-capable codes using standard languages and compilers. It has accelerated the speed and efficiency of real applications with great success. This workshop assumes knowledge of either C or Fortran programming. Participants have the chance to use the Bridges-2 computing platform at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for a hands-on learning experience.

The ACCESS program by the National Science Foundation leverages the accomplishments of the 11-year Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment project and extends the ecosystem to incorporate new research methods, thereby fostering greater inclusivity and democratization of participation.

The workshop is in-person and will be hosted by various satellite sites across the country, including at WSU. Interested applicants must first have an ACCESS ID to sign up for the workshop. Registering for the workshop can be done online through Eventbrite by noon Tuesday, June 27. View the tentative agenda for the workshop.

Join the High Performance Computing (HPC) monthly workshop, “Machine learning and big data,” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, May 23 and 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 24 in EE 264 John Bardo Center. This workshop — sponsored by Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) — will focus on big data analytics and machine learning with Spark, as well as deep learning using Tensorflow.

The ACCESS program by the National Science Foundation leverages the accomplishments of the 11-year Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment project and extends the ecosystem to incorporate new research methods, thereby fostering greater inclusivity and democratization of participation.

The event is in-person and will be hosted by various satellite sites across the country, including at Wichita State. Interested applicants must first have an ACCESS ID to sign up for the workshop. Registering for the workshop can be done online through Eventbrite by noon Sunday, May 21.

The High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster at WSU, which was initiated in 2020, provides students and faculty with the computational resources they need to succeed. Any member of the WSU community and those outside of WSU who are KBOR constituents can request access to the HPC cluster. To request account at HPC, visit the HPC website. For those who are new to HPC, we encourage them to review the HPC Users Guide available on our website.

We are also pleased to inform you that WSU researchers can access the Pete Supercomputer, which is an HPC cluster at Oklahoma State University supported by Oklahoma State University’s High-Performance Computing Center. It is worth noting that Oklahoma State University was recently awarded a Major Research Instrumentation award by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build and develop a new supercomputer. This award was a joint effort between Oklahoma State University, Arkansas State University, Wichita State University, Kansas State University, the University of Tulsa, the University of Central Oklahoma, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the Great Plains Network. More information about the award can be found at MRI: Acquisition of a High-Performance Computational System for OAK Region to Enable Computing and Data-Driven Discovery.

If you’re interested in the potential of HPC to accelerate research processes, be sure to stop by our table at the upcoming GRASP symposium. Our team members will be able to share examples of how HPC has been used in various fields and answer any questions you may have about the technology. We invite you to learn more about the applications of HPC in research and discover how it can help you achieve your research goals.

Beocat HPC at Kansas State University will hold two workshops in the afternoons of Oct. 17-18 to teach introductions to Linux, Beocat and more advanced topics in Linux and the Open OnDemand interface to Beocat. BeoShock users are welcome to participate remotely through Zoom at the link below.

Both sessions will be recorded and posted to Beocat YouTube channel. Beocat uses a similar CentOS system and Slurm job scheduler as BeoShock, so this workshop would be a good training opportunity for both new and experienced BeoShock users. The HPC user guides also cover the basic topics (login, job submission, examples for python, and C++) for BeoShock. Below is the agenda:

2:30-4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17

1. Introduction to Linux
2. Introduction to High-Performance Computing: How to use Beocat

2:30-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 18

1. Advanced Linux tips & File Management
2. Open OnDemand: a GUI interface to Beocat

Wichita State University continues to host Beoshock, a High-performance Computing Cluster (HPC). This HPC is available and free to faculty members, researchers and students engaged in course work or research activities.

BeoShock runs the CentOS Linux operating system and features approximately 720 processor cores, two high memory compute nodes with 1.5 terabytes of memory, and four graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators.

For more information, visit the HPC web page.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Higgs boson discovery, Wichita’s State’s High Energy Physics (HEP) Theory Group will host a watch party featuring live video coverage of the national celebration Higgs@10 at 11 a.m. today, June 30 at 262 Rhatigan Student Center.

The Higgs discovery on July 4, 2012, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, was a remarkable milestone in the history of Experimental and Theoretical Particle Physics.

Dr. Terrance Figy, Wichita State Department of Physics, Mathematics and Statistics assistant professor and theoretical physicist, has contributed to the modeling of the Higgs boson production. Dr. Nick Solomey, WSU professor of physics, spent seven years at the European Center for Nuclear Research, the Geneva Switzerland-based research facility where the Higgs boson was discovered.

Participants can also watch the event via Zoom.

Do you want to learn what WSU is doing to enhance capabilities in the area of research computing? Join a “Computing tools for research and instruction” instruction at 11 a.m.-noon March 22 at the Rhatigan Student Center Gridley Room.

During the session, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences assistant professor and undergraduate coordinator Dr. Terrance Figy and Kansas State University system administrator Kyle Huston will provide an overview of computing tools that are available to faculty and students at Wichita State:

Free computing tools at WSU

• Machine Learning Tools – TensorFlow, Spark
• Tools for Coders – Python, C++, C, Fortran, R
• General Purpose Tools: MATLAB, MATHEMATICA, Python, R

Free access to regional multi-user computing facilities (hardware tools):

• BeoShock High Performance Computing Center
• BeoCat High Performance Computing Center
• Open Science Grid

The next training session for BeoShock is 1-4 p.m. Oct. 14 and will take place both online and in person. The location of the training will be announced at a later date.

BeoShock, Wichita State University’s high-performance computing cluster, is available to students, faculty and staff. Since its implementation, it has helped accelerate research and provided valuable computing experiences for students.

Named BeoShock after “Beowulf,” the computing cluster has two large GPUs and 720 CPU cores. As a comparison, most end-user computing devices have one CPU having between one and eight total cores.

This training session will be given at an introductory level so no prior experience with any HPC system is required. The two primary goals of this training are to help minimize the obstacles new users encounter and to improve their productivity with the system. The training agenda is as follows:

• Hour 1: Introduction to Linux and command-line.
• Hour 2: Introduction to BeoShock and the scheduler.
• Hour 3: Open OnDemand and a question and answer session.

For participants who want to follow along with the  training, it is highly recommended that they request an account on BeoShock if they do not already have one.

Wichita State University’s high-performance computing (HPC) cluster is available to students, faculty and staff. Since its implementation, it has helped accelerate research and provided valuable computing experiences for students.

Named after “BeoShock” after “Beowulf” and Shockers, the computing cluster has two large GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and 800 CPU (Central Processing Unit) cores. As a comparison, most end-user computing devices have one CPU having between one and eight total cores.

The cluster is also available to all WSU constituents, and those outside of WSU who are Kansas Board of Regents constituents. To learn more about BeoShock HPC, visit the website. For questions, contact personnel listed here.