Key Information

Tutor: Dr Katerina Michalickova
Course Duration: 3 hour session
Delivery: Live (In-Person) & Live (Online)
Course Credit (PGR only): 1 credit 
Audience: Research Degree Students, Postdocs, Research Fellows

Dates

  • Tues 03 February 2026
    14:00-17:00, MS Teams
  • Weds 11 March 2026
    14:00-17:00, South Kensington
  • Tues 12 May 2026
    11:00-14:00, MS Teams
  • Mon 06 July 2026
    14:00-17:00, South Kensington

Course Resources

  • Materials (TBC)
Pre-course setup:

To be able to join the hands-on work please complete the following steps. It is important that you start a few days before in case you need to troubleshoot

  • Gain access to the Imperial HPC resource - staff can self-register, students have to ask their supervisor to register them online (please see instructions).  If you have problems registering, write to the RCS support.  It may take one day from the registration to getting access.
  • To access the HPC resource from the campus, use Imperial-WPA. To access from off-campus, follow the Unified Access instructions

If you come to the class unable to log into the HPC cluster, you will not be able to follow in an effective manner. The instructor will not be able to give you access on a short notice.

This hands-on workshop is for those who wish to use the high-performance computing resource at the College and have no prior experience working with remote Linux-based systems. The pace is suitable for anyone who knows the basics of the command line and has no other previous experience with HPC. Although the workshop contains material specific to the local HPC resource, it provides generic skills that are portable to resources at other universities. You will learn how to set up a project and deploy a simple computation. You can continue onto the Introduction to HPC at Imperial to build on this knowledge.

Syllabus

  • HPC systems at Imperial
  • Loggin in
  • Transferring files
  • Software management on the cluster
  • Cluster resource manager
  • Computation parameters
  • Deployment scripts
  • Running a simple computation

This course is open to Research Degree Students, Postdocs & Research Fellows. Limited spaces available for wider Imperial community.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this workshop you will be able to:

  • Understand the principles of working on remote Linux-based systems and on HPC
  • Set up a project on Imperial’s HPC resource
  • Combine knowledge of bash scripting and the queue system to write a simple deployment script
  • Ask for help in an informed way

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of the Linux command line. You need to know the file management commands (pwd, mkdir, cd, cp, mv, rm, cat, head, tail) and the nano text editor. You may consider taking ECRI’s The Linux Command Line for Scientific Computing.

How to book

 

Please ensure you have read and understood ECRI’s cancellation policy before booking. 

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Information about the required cancellation notices for places on ECRI courses.