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NERSC Weekly Email, Week of November 8, 2021

Contents

Summary of Upcoming Events and Key Dates

        November 2021
Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
     1   2   3   4   5   6   
 7   8   9 *10* 11  12  13    10 Nov         NERSC Achievement Awards Seminar [1]
                              10 Nov         IDEAS-ECP Monthly Webinar [2]
14  15  16 *17* 18  19  20    17 Nov         Cori Monthly Maint Window [3]
                              17 Nov         NERSC Achievement Awards Seminar [1]
21 *22* 23  24 *25--26* 27    22 Nov         Alvarez/Hopper Fellow Apps Due [4]
                              25-26 Nov      Thanksgiving Holiday [5]
28  29  30  

        December 2021
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
              1   2   3   4
  5   6   7  *8--*9*-10* 11   8-10 Dec       Using Perlmutter Training [6]
                               9 Dec         SpinUp Workshop [7]
 12  13  14 *15* 16  17  18   15 Dec         Cori Monthly Maint Window [3]
 19  20  21  22  23 *24--25-  24 Dec 2021-   Winter Shutdown [8]
-26--27--28--29--30-*31*       3 Jan 2022
                              31 Dec         Corones Nominations Due [9]


        January 2022
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                         -1-
 -2---3*  4   5   6   7   8
  9  10  11  12  13  14  15
 16 *17* 18 *19* 20  21  22   17 Jan 2022    Martin Luther King Holiday [10]
                              19 Jan 2022    First Day of AY22 [11]
 23  24  25  26  27  28  29
 30  31
  1. November 10 & 17, 2021: NERSC Early Career Achievement Award Seminar Series
  2. November 10, 2021: IDEAS-ECP Monthly Webinar
  3. November 17 & December 15, 2021: Cori Monthly Maintenance Window
  4. November 22, 2021: Deadline for Alvarez & Hopper Fellowship Submissions
  5. November 25-26, 2021: Thanksgiving Holiday (No Consulting or Account Support)
  6. December 8-10, 2021: Using Perlmutter Training
  7. December 9, 2021: SpinUp Workshop
  8. December 24, 2021 - January 3, 2022: Winter Shutdown (Limited Consulting and Account Support)
  9. December 31, 2021: James Corones Award Nominations Due
  10. January 17, 2022: Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday (No Consulting or Account Support)
  11. January 19, 2022: First day of Allocation Year 2022
  12. All times are Pacific Time zone
  • Upcoming Planned Outage Dates (see Outages section for more details)

    • none planned this week
  • Other Significant Dates

    • November 14, 2021: 2021 International Workshop on Performance, Portability, and Productivity in HPC (P3HPC)
    • November 14, 2021: Eighth Workshop on Accelerator Programming Using Directives (WACCPD 2021)
    • November 15, 2021: Second International Symposium on Checkpointing for Supercomputing (SuperCheck-SC21)
    • November 15, 2021: 12th International Women in HPC Workshop (WHPC)
    • December 1 & 7-9: NERSC GPU Hackathon
    • February 21, 2022: Presidents Day Holiday (No Consulting or Account Support)

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NERSC Status

NERSC Operations Continue, with Minimal Changes

Berkeley Lab, where NERSC is located, is operating under public health restrictions. NERSC continues to remain open while following site-specific protection plans. We remain in operation, with the majority of NERSC staff working remotely, and staff essential to operations onsite. We do not expect significant changes to our operations in the next few months.

You can continue to expect regular online consulting and account support as well as schedulable online appointments. Trainings continue to be held online. Regular maintenances on the systems continue to be performed while minimizing onsite staff presence, which could result in longer downtimes than would occur under normal circumstances.

Because onsite staffing is so minimal, we request that you continue to refrain from calling NERSC Operations except to report urgent system issues.

For current NERSC systems status, please see the online MOTD and current known issues webpages.

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This Week's Events and Deadlines

IDEAS-ECP Webinar on 55+ Years in HPC: One Woman's Experiences & Perspectives, this Wednesday!

The November webinar in the Best Practices for HPC Software Developers series is entitled "55+ Years in High-Performance Computing: One Woman's Experiences and Perspectives" and will take place this Wednesday, November 10, 2021, at 10:00 am Pacific time.

This webinar's format will be different than the others. Jean Shuler (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) has worked at the leading edge of HPC for 5 decades. This webinar will be a Q&A on the fascinating career of a woman who taught herself programming on the job at NASA Langley beginning in 1963, and found her way to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by 1972, sparking a long career helping others to find their way in HPC. Jean created and led the User Services program at NERSC (then housed at LLNL). When NERSC moved to Berkeley Lab in 1996, Jean applied her passion and experience to support the ASCI program users at Livermore Computing.

If you have an interest in computing history, the experiences and impact of women in computing, or if you are early in your career and looking for inspiration, you will want to attend this webinar and listen to Jean's amazing stories and ask her some questions!

There is no cost to attend, but registration is required. Please register here.

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Perlmutter

Perlmutter Machine Status

The initial phase of the Perlmutter supercomputer is in the NERSC machine room, booting and running successfully.

We have added many early users onto the machine. We hope to add even more users soon.

The second phase of the machine, consisting of CPU-only nodes, will arrive in early 2022. After all the new nodes arrive, all of Perlmutter will be taken out of service and integrated over a period that we anticipate could take up to 8 weeks.

This newsletter item will be updated each week with the latest Perlmutter status.

Prepare Your Dotfiles for Perlmutter!

To help ready your account for Perlmutter, please review your dotfiles. The same home file system is mounted across all NERSC systems, so your .bashrc/.cshrc/etc. files (dotfiles) need to work on all systems. The NERSC_HOST variable can help you distinguish between systems and to set customizations for each system. The NERSC_HOST variable is set automatically to "perlmutter" on Perlmutter and to "cori" on Cori.

Some users may have older dot files that are setting the NERSC_HOST variable without first checking to see whether it already has a value, which will cause problems on Perlmutter. Please ensure that this is not the case in your dotfiles. Feel free to reach out to NERSC consulting with any questions or issues.

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Updates at NERSC

New Default Python module at AY transition (Wed Jan 19, 2022)

Python users take note: On Jan 19, 2022 at the Allocation Year rollover, NERSC will change our default Python and Python3 modules on Cori to python/3.8-anaconda-2021.05. Please note that older Python modules will remain available, but users must specify the full module name to continue to use them.

Updates in this module include:

  • Mamba 0.7.3 (a faster alternative to conda)
  • netcdf4 1.5.3
  • mpi4py 3.1.1
  • authlib 0.15.4 (support for NERSC's Superfacility API)

Full release notes are available here: https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/reference/release-notes/#anaconda-2021-05-may-13-2021.

pip users should be aware that pip packages installed via --user will be installed at $HOME/.local/cori/3.8-anaconda-2021.05 (defined by $PYTHONUSERBASE).

This module is available now via module load python/3.8-anaconda-2021.05, so we encourage you to test it now. If you notice issues or have questions please contact us at https://help.nersc.gov. NERSC Python users will find a lot of helpful information and advice in our Python documentation: https://docs.nersc.gov/development/languages/python/nersc-python/.

Note that the python/3.8-anaconda-2021.05 module is already the default on Perlmutter. There are no scheduled Python module changes on Perlmutter.

NERSC Annual Report and User Demographics Now Available Online!

The NERSC 2020 Annual Report (pdf) is now available online. Learn about NERSC's response to the unique circumstances of 2020, our major milestones for the year, and some highlights from our users' accomplishments.

Check out our 2020 User Demographics as well.

Apply for Prestigious Alvarez & Hopper Fellowships in Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab & NERSC by November 22

Are you about to earn your PhD in a computational science discipline or have you earned it within the past three years? Are you looking for a position in which you can set your own research agenda within the broad computing science field? Consider applying for the 2022 Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship or the 2022 Admiral Grace Hopper Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Computing Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab!

The Luis W. Alvarez fellowship, established in 2002, offers challenging research opportunities in the development of computational methods and tools for scientific discovery. Fellows apply the latest technologies to computational modeling, simulations, and advanced data analysis for scientific discovery in materials science, biology, astronomy, environmental science, energy, particle physics, genomics, and other scientific domains.

The Admiral Grace Hopper Fellowship was established in 2015 with the goal of developing early-career computational scientists to make outstanding contributions in the area of HPC applications. Applicants should have expertise with advanced algorithms, software techniques, HPC systems, and/or networking in a related research field.

Applications to both fellowships are made jointly by a single process. For more information and to apply, please see the position listing. Applications close on November 22, 2021.

Join Us for the NERSC Early Career Achievement Award Seminar Series, Wednesdays through November 17

NERSC is hosting a seminar searies featuring the recipients of the NERSC Early Career Achievement Awards on Wednesdays at noon (Pacific time) starting Wednesday, September 22, and running through November 17.

This week's talk, presented by Samual Kachuck of the University of Michigan, is entitled "Implementing novel physics in ice sheet models for improved sea-level projections."

For more information on the series and links to join the event, please see https://www.nersc.gov/science/nersc-hpc-achievement-awards/achievement-award-seminar-series/.

All talks will be recorded and posted to NERSC's YouTube channel.

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Calls for Participation

Nominations for James Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building & Communication Now Open!

Do you know a mid-career scientist or engineer (10-20 years post-PhD) who's making an impact in leadership, community building, and scientific communication? Recognize that person's work in encouraging and mentoring young people to be active in the science community, to communicate their work effectively, and to make a difference in their scientific area, by nominating them for the James Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building, and Communication!

The Award was established by the Krell Institute in 2019 in honor and memory of James "Jim" Corones, founder of the Krell Institute and advocate for mentoring and developing leaders in the scientific community and developing scientists' communication skills to present their research to a general audience. The prize consists of a $2,000 cash award and an engraved tangible gift. Travel expenses will also be covered for the winner to attend a designated event.

Nominations require a letter of support from the nominator and a form identifying the nominee and identifying three additional references who can speak to the nominee's character and accomplishments. Self-nominations are accepted.

For more information, please see the Krell Institute Corones Award Webpage. Nominations are due December 31, 2021.

8th Workshop on Accelerator Programming using Directives (WACCPD 2021): Call for Participation

We invite you to attend the 8th Workshop on Accelerator Programming using Directives, which aims to showcase all aspects of accelerator programming for heterogeneous systems. The workshop will highlight the improvements over the state-of-the-art through accepted papers and prompt discussion through keynotes and panels.

The workshop will be held in conjunction with SC21 on Sunday, November 14, but remote participation is available. For more information, please see https://www.waccpd.org.

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Upcoming Training Events

Training on Using Perlmutter, December 8-10

NERSC and HPE staff will hold a three-day training event on using Perlmutter, Wednesday through Friday, December 8-10. This event is a continuation and extension of the Introduction to Perlmutter held in June, and is focused on using Perlmutter, including hands-on exercises.

Day 1 will begin with a brief recap and updated overview of the Perlmutter hardware and programming environment, followed by building and running applications on Perlmutter. Day 2 will introduce the HPE profiling and debugging tools, which are primarily CPU focused. The last day will include GPU basics, an overview of GPU programming models, and using Jupyter, Python, and Machine Learning / Deep Learning on Perlmutter. Each day includes hands-on exercises.

For more information and to register, please see https://www.nersc.gov/users/training/events/using-perlmutter-training-dec-8-10-2021/.

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NERSC News

No New "NERSC User News" Podcast this Week

There will be no new episode of the "NERSC User News" podcast this week. We encourage you to instead enjoy some of our most recent episodes and greatest hits:

  • NERSC 2020 in Review & Looking Forward NERSC director Sudip Dosanjh discusses the highlights of 2020 at NERSC, as well as what to look forward to in 2021 and beyond.
  • Software Support Policy In this interview with NERSC HPC Consultant Steve Leak, learn about the new NERSC software support policy: what it is, how it works, and its benefits for users and NERSC staff alike.
  • NERSC Power Upgrade In this interview with Berkeley Lab Infrastructure Modernization Division's David Topete, learn about the power upgrade happening this weekend, the work that has to be done, and the steps taken to ensure the safety of the workers involved in the effort.
  • Dynamic fan NERSC Energy Efficiency Engineer Norm Bourassa talks about how NERSC is saving energy with the dynamic fan settings on the Cori supercomputing cabinets, and what NERSC is doing to make the cabinets even more energy efficient.
  • RAPIDS In this interview with NVIDIA RAPIDS senior engineer Nick Becker, learn about the RAPIDS library, how it can accelerate your data science, and how to use it.
  • IO Middleware NERSC Principal Data Architect Quincey Koziol talks about IO Middleware: what it is, how you can benefit from using it in your code, and how it is evolving to support data-intensive computing and future supercomputing architectures.
  • Community File System NERSC Storage System Group staff Kristy Kallback-Rose, Greg Butler, and Ravi Cheema talk about the new Community File System and the migration timeline.
  • Monitoring System Performance NERSC Computational Systems Group's Eric Roman discusses how NERSC monitors system performance, what we're doing with the data right now, and how we plan to use it in the future.
  • The Superfacility Concept: Join NERSC Data Science Engagement Group Lead Debbie Bard in a discussion about the concept of the superfacility: what it means, how facilities interact, and what NERSC and partner experimental facilities are doing to prepare for the future of data-intensive science.
  • Optimizing I/O in Applications: Listen to an I/O optimization success story in this interview with NERSC Data and Analytics Services Group's Jialin Liu.
  • NESAP Postdocs: Learn from NESAP postdoc Laurie Stephey what it's like working as a postdoc in the NESAP program at NERSC.

The NERSC User News podcast, produced by the NERSC User Engagement Group, is available at https://anchor.fm/nersc-news and syndicated through iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and more.

Please give it a listen and let us know what you think, via a ticket at https://help.nersc.gov.

Come Work for NERSC!

NERSC currently has several openings for postdocs, system administrators, and more! If you are looking for new opportunities, please consider the following openings:

  • Scientific Data Architect: Collaborate with scientists to meet their Data, AI, and Analytics needs on NERSC supercomputers.
  • Exascale Computing Postdoctoral Fellow: Collaborate with ECP math library and scientific application teams to enable the solution of deep, meaningful problems targeted by the ECP program and other DOE/Office of Science program areas.
  • Data & Analytics Team Group Lead: Provide vision and guidance and lead a team that provides data management, analytics and AI software, support, and expertise to NERSC users.
  • Cyber Security Engineer: Help protect NERSC from malicious and unauthorized activity.
  • Machine Learning Engineer: Apply machine learning and AI to NERSC systems to improve on their ability to deliver productive science output.
  • HPC Performance Engineer: Join a multidisciplinary team of computational and domain scientists to speed up scientific codes on cutting-edge computing architectures.
  • Software Integration Engineer: Develop and support software integration with Continuous Integration in collaboration with ECP.
  • NESAP for Simulations Postdoctoral Fellow: Work in multidisciplinary teams to develop and optimize codes for the Perlmutter system and produce mission-relevant science that pushes the limits of high-performance computing.

(Note: You can browse all our job openings by first navigating to https://jobs.lbl.gov/jobs/search/. Under "Business," select "View More" and scroll down to find and select the checkbox for "NE-NERSC".)

We know that NERSC users can make great NERSC employees! We look forward to seeing your application.

Upcoming Outages

  • Cori
    • 11/17/21 07:00-20:00 PST, Scheduled Maintenance
    • 12/15/21 07:00-20:00 PST, Scheduled Maintenance
  • Science Databases
    • 11/17/21 09:00-12:00 PST, Scheduled Maintenance Databases on mongodb07 may be sluggish or briefly unreachable due to a compaction process.
  • HPSS Archive (User)
    • 11/17/21 9:00-13:00 PST, Scheduled Maintenance HPSS Archive system will be unavailable during the scheduled maintenance.

Visit http://my.nersc.gov/ for latest status and outage information.

About this Email

You are receiving this email because you are the owner of an active account at NERSC. This mailing list is automatically populated with the email addresses associated with active NERSC accounts. In order to remove yourself from this mailing list, you must close your account, which can be done by emailing [email protected] with your request.