Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS)

Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)

Training courses for users

JSC offers a training program of about 25 HPC-relevant courses per year. The courses are divided into the categories ‘basic’, e.g., courses on programming languages, parallel environments, usage of HPC systems and introductory courses on deep learning, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’, e.g., advanced MPI, hybrid programming, and GPU programming. Furthermore, some community-oriented or method-oriented courses are given, e.g., courses for the Earth system modelling community. The main target audience are supercomputer users. However, any interested student, postdoc and scientist from European academia or industry may also participate in JSC’s courses for free. As one of the three partners in the German PRACE Training Centre, JSC has delivered up to six intermediate or advanced courses as so-called PRACE training courses to the PRACE community annually since 2012.

Trainers are usually staff members of JSC. Courses with hardware-specific topics are sometimes supported by instructors from the hardware vendors. In a few cases, courses of JSC’s strategic partners are integrated into the program. In exchange, JSC trainers are occasionally invited to give their courses at other sites. All courses are evaluated by the participants afterwards, thus giving valuable feedback for the instructors and organizers. The training material of the courses is offered on this website.

Most courses are traditional hands-on training courses with an average length of three days. Until March 2020, the courses were usually conducted on-site in the computer labs of the JSC. During the Corona pandemic, most courses were transferred to online events. The introductory course to supercomputing at JSC is also recorded and the video clips are available online at the training course material webpage.