Research Support
Mills and new cluster updates
The Mills High Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster is now past its original end-of-life date but remains functional based on the criteria listed in the policy document. Researchers whose work remains on Mills are encouraged to buy into the new HPC cluster that is in the final stages of design development. UD researchers interested in purchasing computing nodes in the next cluster or wanting to learn more about UD’s HPC community cluster program should email it-hpc-interest@udel.edu.
HPC training in October and January
IT Research Computing staff offered a variety of training sessions during October 2016 and January 2017. Topics included Introduction to UNIX, shell programming, vi, and getting started on Farber. We also participate in XSEDE monthly workshops and other training events. An updated list of training events, topics, and dates is available at the Research Computing website.
HPC Symposium series
- September 2016: Sunita Chandrasekaran, assistant professor of Computer and Information Sciences, and her research group led the September 2016 session of the HPC Symposium series. During her presentation, Chandrasekaran discussed how she uses her nodes on the Farber HPC cluster to understand state-of-the-art hardware, explore compilation techniques, run applications faster, and learn to use new evaluation metrics. The session ended with a discussion about the merits of OpenACC and OpenMP and plans for the new HPC cluster.
- February 2017: The first 2017 High Performance Computing Symposium session will be at the Faculty Commons on Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 10:00 a.m. The event will kick off with a presentation by the Janotti Research Group followed by an hour-long open forum for attendees to ask questions and share ideas. (Register)
- Schedule and format change: The HPC team is changing the format of the HPC Symposium series. Meetings will now occur on the fourth Wednesday of February, June, and September. In addition, the June symposium will now be a poster session for research groups to highlight their current research and how they are using cluster computing locally or nationally.
The symposium series is designed for researchers using or interested in using the University’s HPC clusters. Those interested in presenting at a future HPC Symposium should contact it-hpc-interest@udel.edu.
GIS events
- GIS Day provides an international forum for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) users to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in society. Nov. 16, the University Library, IT-CS&S, Department of Geography, Department of History, Delaware Geological Survey, Disaster Research Center, and Water Resources Center collaborated to celebrate GIS Day on campus. The UD event consisted of a series of ten-minute presentations that covered topics from how GIS is used to help make decisions regarding traffic patterns to visualizing plant invasion pressures on local forests. The event concluded with a poster session of UD GIS-related research.
- IT-CS&S collaborated with the University Library to host hosted training in the widely used ArcGIS software: Getting Started with ArcGIS Online on Oct. 25, and Getting Started with ArcGIS for Desktop on Nov. 1. IT-CS&S also provided a training session at the 2017 Winter Faculty Institute on “An Introduction to GIS tools for the classroom.”
- IT-CS&S continues to host the UD GIS Coffee Hour for GIS users from UD and the surrounding community. In October, Naomi Bates from the Delaware Geological Survey presented “Delaware LiDAR Data, Derivatives, and Applications.” In December, Lillian Wang from the Delaware Geological Survey presented “Geologic Field Mapping in Delaware–Paper Maps to ESRI Collector App.”
