Author: Terrance Figy

Wichita State students and faculty have access to a wide range of computational resources, locally and through regional and national partnerships. Make the most of these powerful tools to boost your research and projects at no cost.

Local resources:

• BeoShock – Wichita State: The BeoShock High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster at WSU provides computational resources to students and faculty, as well as KBOR constituents outside of WSU. To request an HPC account, visit the HPC user access request page. For further information, visit the HPC website or contact the HPC director at WSU, Dr. Terrance Figy, at terrance.figy@wichita.edu.
  

  If you are new to HPC, the best resource to start with is BeoShock HPC system. Once you educate yourself about HPC and your computing needs grow, you are welcome to explore the following large-scale computing clusters.

• Ryan Doll and Terrance Figy via Award Abstract # 2346097, “CC* Planning: Establishing a Sustainable Framework for High-Performance Computing Growth at Wichita State University,” are formulating plans for the next generation of advanced computing resources. If you would like to be involved or have opinions, contact either Terrance Figy (terrance.figy@wichita.edu) or Ryan Doll (ryan.doll@wichita.edu).

Regional resources:

• Pete – Oklahoma State University: The Pete Supercomputer at Oklahoma State University offers advanced computational resources and data storage, accessible to students and faculty at WSU to support diverse research initiatives.
• New computing resource coming soon
  This is an outcome of a collaborative effort among Wichita State University, Oklahoma State University and six other institutions in the OAK region, resulting in the MRI award for the “Acquisition of a High-Performance Computational System for OAK Region to Enable Computing and Data-Driven Discovery.”
• BeoCat – Kansas State University: Beocat, a high-performance computing cluster at Kansas State University operated by the Institute for Computational Research, offers free access to any educational researcher in Kansas and their collaborators.

National resources:

• Open Science Grid: The Open Science Grid facilitates high-throughput computing, enabling the parallel execution of numerous tasks or simulations that demand substantial computational resources over extended periods.
• ACCESS: ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support) supports computational- and data-intensive research with resources like HPC clusters, virtualization clusters and massive storage clusters. For account creation and resource information, contact Campus Champion Dr. Terrance Figy at terrance.figy@wichita.edu.
• NRP: The National Research Platform (NRP) is a heterogeneous, nationally distributed, open system that includes different types of processors: standard CPUs, GPUs optimized for different precision levels and FPGAs. It has two types of setups at three locations: one for high-performance tasks and two optimized for specific types of GPUs. This setup supports various tasks like data science, simulations and machine learning or AI. It also allows easy data access through a large, connected network that shares content across the country.
  

   

  
  

The Wichita State University community is invited to attend the third OAK Supercomputing Conference from May 22-23.

On-site registration is available on the third floor of the Rhatigan Student Center, but please note that some sessions have limited capacity.

The Wichita State University community is invited to attend the fourth HPC Security Workshop at Wichita State University from May 20 through May 21.

On-site registration is available, but please note that some sessions have limited capacity. Registration is on the third floor of the Rhatigan Student Center.

The campus community is invited to the OAK Supercomputing Conference and High Performance Computing Security Workshop at Wichita State University.

Major topics will include:

• High performance and high throughput computing (HPC/HTC)
• Cybersecurity
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)
• Data analytics and data visualization
• Internet of things (IoT)

The event will take place May 20-23 and will bring together leading researchers, industry professionals, federal agencies and students from across the nation to share their experience in high-performance computing.

The conference is open to participants from higher-education, government and industry. Attendance is from many of the major national labs, research centers, universities and industry from across the nation. The event will provide a unique opportunity to interact with many of the leading and emerging players in the community. Think about collaborations and funding opportunities.

Registration is free but required. For more information, visit the conference website and workshop website.

There is also a number of opportunities for students, including:

• Several student competitions including posters, presentations and projects with prizes awarded
• Several free leaning opportunities including Nvidia and Mathlab workshops. The Nvidia workshop, which usually cost around $600, will award a certificate for the students who attend all 8 hours.
• Several companies that will be there, and a number are looking to hire
• And food served for free

Consider registering, as it will help with future events. Reach out to Terrance Figy for any questions at terrance.figy@wichita.edu.

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.