The Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) facilitation team spent the morning of November 8 with over 50 students, researchers, and faculty interested in learning high performance computing (HPC) and high throughput computing (HTC). Lead Research Computing Facilitator, Christina Koch, began by asking everyone in the room who had run into problems with computing on a single computer to raise their hand. Over half the room did so. Participants reported bottlenecks such as month-long run times or loops with millions of iterations. The facilitation team then delved into why these problems were happening and how CHTC could help.

The workshop focused on identifying and practicing the steps needed to use a large-scale computing system at CHTC. Students were provided with detailed workflows and tools to improve their usage of high throughput computing or high performance computing. Hands-on examples were also incorporated, where attendees did the work themselves. Participants then got to “meet a server” and see what happens behind the scenes when they use CHTC resources.

Given the attendance and high level of interest in this workshop, it certainly will not be the last. The CHTC facilitation team is planning to host additional large-scale computing workshops in the future for those that missed this opportunity.