GOVERNMENT

CHAMPAIGN, IL -- The National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) Partners for Advanced Computational Services (PACS) is now offering two new online training courses. These parallel programming courses are designed for the high performance computing (HPC) user community. The Introduction to OpenMP Course was primarily created by Doug Sondak and Kadin Tseng at Boston University along with Andrew Pineda at the University of New Mexico. The course provides an introduction to OpenMP, a standardized application program interface for parallelizing Fortran, C, and C++ programs on shared memory architectures. The Multilevel Parallel Programming Course was largely created by the Science and Technology Support (STS) group at OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center), lead by Leslie Southern, OSC Senior Supercomputer Resource Specialist. This tutorial demonstrates multi-level parallel programming using MPI, a standard message-passing library, and OpenMP, a widely-accepted shared memory parallel programming environment. These asynchronous tutorials include self-tests, glossaries, sample tests and discussion on the latest trends in this rapidly evolving field. The tutorials can be accessed at http://webct.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8900/. In addition to content providers, many individuals contributed to the success of the online courses. Expert reviewers included PACS members, such as those from National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the University of Kentucky, and existing online MPI course users. “The breadth of contributors from across the country and world allowed us to create content-rich HPC courses,” said Southern. “The experience of the content providers’ and reviewers’ experiences helped perfect the courses for the HPC community. Working with a great group of individuals while creating quality HPC training materials has been a very rewarding.” About PACS PACS supports the technologies developed by Alliance teams. It coordinates Alliance resources and services to users, aids in Grid deployment, and provides outreach to the research community.