Cray Tools Workshop

Delivered in collaboration with The Cray Centre of Excellence, this course covers the specfic features of the Cray XC30 over two days. It will introduce new users and those familiar with previous generations of Cray hardware to the powerful and advanced customisation features of the Cray hardware and software stack available.

This course is focused on hardware and software issues specific to the Cray XC30, and includes a detailed overview of the Intel Xeon processors, the Aries network interconnect and Cray provided systems software and performance tools. It is ideal for both users upgrading from, and therefore familiar with, existing Cray supercomputers or those porting form alternative platforms. The programme will include:

• Detailed introduction into the new Cray XC30 hardware architecture.
• Deep diving in use of the Intel Xeon processors.
• Full explanation of thread binding mechanism covering use of "Hyperthread" technology.
• Introduction to the Cray Compilation Environment and Intel Composer compilers.
• Advice on how to select correct compilation options for individual application requirements.
• 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 the built in performance analysis tools, CrayPAT, and the code restructuring tool, Reveal.

Pre-requisites

Attendees would benefit from experience with or an interest in Cray supercomputers and an understanding of modern HPC languages and techniques (i.e. C, Fortran, C++ and/or MPI, PGAS and/or SHMEM). There will also be many opportunities for attendees to discuss their applications with experts from Cray and EPCC so the organisers encourage attendees to make their own applications available for testing during practical sessions.

Course Files

Click the following headings to download a pdf of the relevant slides:

• Overview
• XC30 Architecture Overview
• XC30 Compilers and Libraries
• Running applications on the Cray XC30
• Advanced Job Launching
• Introduction to Performance Analysis
• Scientific Libraries
• Understanding MPI on the Cray XC30
• Load Balance & Rank Placement
• Single Node Optimisation Techniques
• Single Node Performance Analysis
• Introduction to Tools on XC30
• IO

The course uses the following .tar.bz2 files:

• VH1-craypat
• xthi

Registration

Please use the training page to find the next cray tool workshop for ARCHER.