Julia for High Performance Computing workshop - Task 060

Fit to programme

This task has been identified by the working groups as part of the agenda behind WP 2.4.

The task number is 060.

Summary

Julia is a modern programming language specifically designed for scientific computing. It is being used in several projects in many different fields, from economics to ocean and atmospheric simulations, just to name a few, but not many training courses for its use are regularly available in the UK.

We suggest to developing and deploying training to upskill research software practitioners to the use of the Julia language for accelerated computing, which also provides an accessible way to enter the HPC domain for newcomers.

Methodology

Develop and run a multi-day workshop covering topics spanning from the fundamentals of the Julia language to doing distributed computing with it. This should build on existing training material for Julia for accelerated computing.

Lesson material should be prepared and shared in such a way that later learners can follow it at their own pace, rather than needing to wait for the workshop to be run again, as is done for lessons provided by The Carpentries.

Implementers of this task may consider to use the budget to make the workshop as accessible and inclusive as possible, for example with very low or free registration fee, and other ways to encourage the participation of people from under-represented backgrounds in the research software and HPC domains. The workshop instance should additionally be used to measure timings of the lesson duration, and identify any issues with the material, which should be fixed prior to concluson of the task.

Outcomes

• Training material, designed to be able both to be delivered live by an instructor and followed later at the learner’s own pace. To be made freely available, including via the SHAREing website.

• Delivery of one iteration of the workshop