HPC Summer School 2023

For many years EPCC has opened its doors to students in the summer. Examples include the summer student projects scheme, which began EPCC’s relationship with various colleagues including Professor Neil Chue Hong; our MSc in High Performance Computing, with its student dissertations taking place over the summer (Adrian Jackson was the first of dozens of colleagues to join us from our MSc programmes), and the PRACE Summer of HPC (2013–2022), whose alumni include EPCC’s Caoimhin Laoide-Kemp and Kara Moraw. 

Such programmes offer important formative experiences and can shape the course of an entire career in HPC. So when the chance arose to increase the provision of such opportunities for undergraduates at UK universities (thanks to funding from the Software Sustainability Institute matched by EPCC), myself and my colleague Ludovic Capelli felt obliged to seize it.

The class of 2023

A competitive application and interview process in April and May provided us with a cohort drawn from six universities and with a diverse range of academic backgrounds including Computer Science, Physics, Environmental Science, and Software Engineering.

The programme (so far…)

After their arrival the group gathered for a welcome meal. The following week they joined ARCHER2 training courses on software and HPC Carpentry, then moved on to more bespoke training on shared memory and distributed memory programming. This was followed by a visit to EPCC's Advanced Computing Facility, briefings on the potential projects to follow, and a two-day hackathon, before most of the students departed Edinburgh. We also took the opportunity to show the students many of the sights of Edinburgh.

This was not the end of the experience, however, as on 10 July students began work on experiential learning-based projects in areas as diverse as quantum computing, plankton classification, microbenchmarking, and image edge detection. This will continue until the programme concludes on 28 July with presentations about the work undertaken and each students' learning experience.

Personal reflection

The first run of a new programme is always a learning experience and we have gained immensely useful feedback from the students about how the different training elements have fitted together, how we can improve the flow and connection between different parts, and what does and doesn't work regarding delivery style. Should we be in a position to offer the summer school again, this will all be immensely beneficial.

It has been a pleasure to welcome such enthusiastic, engaged, and eager students to EPCC and Edinburgh and we are already investigating potential options for a 2024 edition. We will post further updates on the EPCC website when we can.

The 2023 EPCC HPC Summer School was funded by EPCC, in partnership with the Software Sustainability Institute and supported by ARCHER2.