High-Performance Computing Workshop [Beginners and Intermediate Level]In-Person Event

4 Nov 2025, 09:00 → 5 Nov 2025, 16:30 Europe/Berlin

114 (CASUS)

Andreas Knüpfer (CASUS / HZDR), Franz Pöschel (CASUS / HZDR), Jiri Vyskocil (CASUS / HZDR)

High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters are used for large scale data processing and data analysis as well as highly parallel simulations of ever increasing fidelity. This course is meant to introduce the principles of how to work on HPC clusters in general and invites to collect first hands-on experience on the HZDR cluster. It covers all steps from connecting to the cluster to running parallel code plus useful tips and tricks for convenient day to day work.

The workshop jointly organized by the Scientific Compute Core (SCC) department at CASUS in Görlitz and FWCI-H at HZDR in Dresden Rossendorf. It will take place in Görlitz and is open for attendees from academia, research, and industry.

Tuesday 4 November

Welcome address and Introduction to the HZDR HPC cluster

Overview of the High Performance Computing cluster at HZDR and its architecture.

Access to cluster and interactive jobs

Logging in to the cluster, run interactive jobs, copy data there and back

Coffee Break

Running batch jobs & using software from the module system

Working with the SLURM scheduler and using the module system to load software and libraries from a large set of pre-installed modules.

Lunch break

Job scripts and Array Jobs

Series of SLURM jobs for parameter scans. Bonus: Using AI chat bots to generate job scripts for you.

Coffee Break

Bonus: Log in with SSH without a password

Login from the command line with SSH, copy data on the command line with SCP, use SSH keys to log in and for copying without entering your password every time

Wednesday 5 November

Running Jupyter Notebooks on the HPC cluster

Running your own Python environments and Jupyter notebooks with custom kernels

Conveners: Franz Poeschel (CASUS/HZDR), Mani Lokamani (HZDR)

Coffee Break

MPI Jobs

Running multi-node parallel programs using MPI

Lunch break

Advanced SLURM

Scheduling interdependent jobs and using signals to communicate with running jobs.

Coffee Break

Bonus: On-demand Session

Topic chosen by participant vote from one of the following
- Tricks for the command line
- TU Dresden clusters
- Remote VSCode integration
or ask for specific topics.

Convener: Andreas Knuepfer (HZDR)