HPC and RSE Workshop

ExCALIBUR RSEs meet HPC Champions

Newcastle, September 9, 2022 

This hybrid workshop was organised to bring together research software engineers, researchers, and other people interested in high performance computing. It was organised by Jemma Shipton and Marion Weinzierl from the ExCALIBUR KEC group and Andy Turner as leader of the HPC Champions network, and sponsored by EPCC and ARCHER2.  

As a co-located event directly after RSECon22, the aim was to include RSEs who might not yet be involved in ExCALIBUR and the HPC community. The program entailed lightning talks from the ExCALIBUR projects as well as HPC Champions talks, and the afternoon was reserved for breakout discussions. The organisers included lots of time for networking and discussions during coffee and lunch breaks, giving everyone time to catch up and meet new and old people after the long Covid break. 

46 people attended in person, and around 10 online. The programme and link to the Google drive with discussion notes can be found at https://hpc-uk.github.io/rsecon22-event/ .  

Discussion groups formed around the topics of 

  • Skills and Training, 
  • Containers and Software Packaging, 
  • Schedulers and Workflows and 
  • Energy, Emissions and Net Zero, 

with the training topic being particularly popular. This linked in well with the presentations of the two ExCALIBUR RSE Development projects: 

The RSE Training in Algorithms project, led by Jemma Shipton and Omar Jamil, is currently discussing their planned summer school for 2023 with the other ExCALIBUR projects, which is a great example of a project working with the Knowledge Exchange Coordinator group to receive input and build collaborations with others.