Key Information
Tutor: Dr Katerina Michalickova
Course Duration: 2 x 2 hour sessions
Delivery: Live (In-Person) & Live (Online)
Course Credit (PGR only): 1 credit
Audience: Research Degree Students, Postdocs, Research Fellows
Dates
- 04 & 05 February 2026
15:00-17:00, MS Teams - 12 & 13 March 2026
14:00-16:00, South Kensington - 13 & 14 May 2026
11:00-13:00, MS Teams - 09 & 10 July 2026
13:00-15:00, South Kensington
Course Resources
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 it builds on the content of Demystifying HPC for beginners. The pace is suitable for anyone who knows the basics of the command line and has little experience with HPC (such as running a simple job). Participants who already use the HPC system may also benefit by formalising their knowledge and expanding their overview of parallel methods. Although the workshop contains material specific to the local HPC resource, it provides generic skills that are portable to resources at other universities.
We will review setting up a simple computations. Next, we will consider data parallelism, which is especially useful if you find yourself processing a large number of files or repeating the same task many times over with varying inputs. Finally, we will move onto the fundamentals of parallel computing and demonstrate how to deploy parallel programs on the resource. The class is entirely hands-on, you will follow the instructor and have time for independent exercises
Syllabus
- Systems at Imperial
- Setting up a simple computation
- Data parallelism
- Quick introduction to Open Multi-Processing
- OpenMP deployment on the cluster
- Quick introduction to Message Passing Interface
- MPI deployment on the cluster
- Parallel Python examples
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 purpose of HPC systems at Imperial
- Combine knowledge of bash scripting and queue system to write deployment scripts
- Use Imperial HPC systems for serial, multiple serial and parallel jobs
- 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.
How to book
- Early Career Researchers (Research Degree Students, Postdocs, Research Fellows) should book via Inkpath using your Imperial Single-Sign-On.
- All other members of the Imperial community, should book here.
Please ensure you have read and understood ECRI’s cancellation policy before booking.