Virtual Workshop: Toward a Globally Acknowledged and Free HPC Certification

Background

The ever-changing nature of HPC has always compelled the HPC community to focus a lot of effort on training new and existing practitioners. Historically, these efforts were tailored around a typical group of users possessing, due to their background, a certain set of programming skills. However, as HPC has become more diverse in terms of hardware, software, and the user background, the traditional training approaches became insufficient in addressing the training needs of our community. This increasingly complicated HPC landscape makes the development and delivery of new training materials challenging. During training delivery educators need to address the knowledge gaps resulting from diverse backgrounds of their learners. It is not uncommon for an attendee to come with a specific learning objective related to their work tasks and typically not interested in the core HPC knowledge. How should we develop training for users, often coming from non-traditionally HPC disciplines, and only interested in learning a particular set of skills? How can we satisfy their training needs if we don’t really understand what these are? HPC centres struggle to identify and overcome the gaps in users’ knowledge, while users struggle to identify the skills required to perform their tasks.

Description

The goal of the HPC Certification Forum is to clearly categorize, define, and examine competencies expected from proficient HPC practitioners. The HPC Certification Forum (HPCCF) has the role of the central authority to curate and maintain the certification program. The program consists of three parts: competencies defined in a modular and easily expandable skill tree, the examination process to verify that practitioners possess those skills, and finally the certification demonstrating their knowledge. Although the forum is not involved in the development of any training materials or tools, it supports the ecosystem around the competencies. The ultimate goal of the forum is to offer a free globally acknowledged certification program that would make the HPC education and training more transparent and quantifiable for training providers, and easier to navigate for practitioners.

The goal of the organized workshops is to discuss the opportunities for establishing a globally acknowledged HPC certification process. To allow attendees to attend regardless of their timezone, we organize one workshop suitable for EU/US attendees and one for EU/Eastern attendees. While the HPC Certification Forum has made progress over the last two years, we still require the input and the contributions from the wider HPC community to ensure that this will become a community-endorsed effort. To make sure this is an independent community-wide effort, we invite anyone interested in HPC teaching and training to participate in the discussion.

The workshop(s) will be recorded and YouTube videos will be provided on this page.

Organizers

  • Julian Kunkel
  • Anja Gerbes
  • Christian Meesters
  • Julie Mullen

Scope

Key information    
When US/EU Workshop May 18th, 15-18 BST; 9-12 am Central time
  EU/Eastern Workshop May 20th, 9-11 BST; 18-20 AEST
Where Virtual Workshop Details will be published to registered attendees

Agenda (US/EU Workshop)

Each of the talks is followed by a short Q&A. The YouTube playlist of the whole workshop is available here.

Introduction to the HPC Certification Forum (20 minutes)

  • About the HPC Certification Forum – Julian Kunkel (University of Reading)
    This talk introduces the forum and gives an overview of its role and performed activities, the status and strategies for long-term sustainability.
    Slides – Video

Invited Speakers (10 minutes each)

  • Engaging Communities to Build HPC Certification: Lessons Learned – Julie Mullen (MIT)
    In this brief presentation, we will introduce the ACM SIGHPC Education Chapter and discuss the work that the Education Content Committee has been doing with the HPC Certification Forum. We will focus on our experience building guidelines for how communities can engage with the Forum to expand the definition of skills and add assessment questions to the library of questions from which exams are drawn. We close with a set of steps that organizations need to take and recommendations for enabling the collaboration.
    Slides – Video
  • Best Practices for Performance Engineering Training – Bernd Mohr (Forschungszentrum Jülich)
    My team and I perform about 10-15 performance engineering training and tutorial events on average every year for the past 20 years. As a member of the Virtual Institute High Productivity Supercomputing (vi-hps.org) we also organize and undertake so-called 3-5 day Tuning Workshops, where participants learn how to use HPC performance tools and then apply these tools to their own application codes under supervision of experts.
    Slides – Video
  • The Supercomputing Academy – Michael Resch (HLRS Stuttgart)
    Over the last 20 years HLRS has developed a comprehensive training program for its users. In order to broaden the scope of that program both in terms of topics and in terms of attendants HLRS has started a project to create a Supercomputing Academy. This talk will introduce the project, its activities and the sustainable approach to training that HLRS will follow in the future. The talk will also highlight the connection between the training program of HLRS and our educational activities as part of the University of Stuttgart.
    Slides – Video
  • Towards building an HPC workforce in Africa – Bryan Johnston (CHPC)
    South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) supports the country’s academic community through the provision of leading HPC resources and expertise. The CHPC recognises the importance of developing a competent HPC workforce and to this end the CHPC hosts annual Summer and Winter schools, as well as an annual Student Cluster Competition for undergraduate students. In addition to the user competence development, the CHPC also leads the HPC Ecosystems Project, which focuses on developing the HPC System Administration workforce in Africa. This talk will provide a brief overview of the CHPC’s primary activities in this space, including identified challenges and lessons learned, concluding with a summary of the CHPC’s needs for a universal HPC certification.
    Slides – Video

Examination and certification of HPCCF (20 minutes)

Discussion

  • Recognition of certificates
  • Obtaining a critical mass of questions

Agenda (EU/Eastern Workshop)

Each of the talks is followed by a short Q&A. The YouTube playlist of the whole workshop is available here.

Introduction to the HPC Certification Forum (20 minutes)

  • About the HPC Certification Forum – Julian Kunkel (University of Reading)
    This talk introduces the forum and gives an overview of its role and performed activities, the status and strategies for long-term sustainability.
    Slides – Video.

Invited Speakers (10 minutes each)

  • Untapped potential: adopting HPC Carpentry in AU/NZ – Megan Guidry (NeSi)
    Slides – Video.
  • Training and Curriculum Development for International HPC Certification – Lev Lafayette (University of Melbourne)
    The International HPC Certification programme separates certification from the delivery of teaching and training. However, to help build an ecosystem, it offers HPC CF endorsements of training content. In addition, examinable material, the skills of the Certification are very much like elements of a training curriculum. As such, discussion on how to incorporate and deliver these skills in individual and institutional training programmes. See the webpage
    Slides – Video.
  • Towards building an HPC workforce in Africa – Bryan Johnston (CHPC)
    South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) supports the country’s academic community through the provision of leading HPC resources and expertise. The CHPC recognises the importance of developing a competent HPC workforce and to this end the CHPC hosts annual Summer and Winter schools, as well as an annual Student Cluster Competition for undergraduate students. In addition to the user competence development, the CHPC also leads the HPC Ecosystems Project, which focuses on developing the HPC System Administration workforce in Africa. This talk will provide a brief overview of the CHPC’s primary activities in this space, including identified challenges and lessons learned, concluding with a summary of the CHPC’s needs for a universal HPC certification.
    Slides – Video.
  • Engaging Communities to Build HPC Certification: Lessons Learned – Weronika Filinger (EPCC)
    In this brief presentation, we will introduce the ACM SIGHPC Education Chapter and discuss the work that the Education Content Committee has been doing with the HPC Certification Forum. We will focus on our experience building guidelines for how communities can engage with the Forum to expand the definition of skills and add assessment questions to the library of questions from which exams are drawn. We close with a set of steps that organizations need to take and recommendations for enabling the collaboration.
    Slides – Video.

Examination and certification of HPCCF (20 minutes)

Discussion

  • Recognition of certificates
  • Obtaining a critical mass of questions