Learning How to program on HPC cluster (part II: C, Fortran, debugging and profiling)

Thursday 9 Nov 2023, 09:30 → 17:30 Europe/Brussels

SHANON (building Maxwell, first floor) (Louvain-La-Neuve)

In this session we will cover the basics of some of the most common programming languages for HPC (syntax and basic concept)
Contents: Introduction to programation with C language Debugging and profiling scientific code, and commercial optimized libraries Introduction to structured programming with Fortran	Prerequisite: Being able to use SSH with private keys  Being familiar with a text editor  Mastering the Linux command line and the GNU utilities (mkdir, cp, scp, etc.)
	Type: Hands-on Target audience: Rookie programmers Must: This session is a must for anyone who needs to write programs.

1 Introduction to programming with C language

C is a very performant language on which are build C++ but also Python (and many others). Even if this language is now mainly superseeded by C++, it is important to understand the basic of the language if you want to learn C++ and or Cuda programming (for GPU).

Contents: Basic of C programming pointer concept array memory management

Prerequisite: Being able to use SSH with private keys  Being familiar with a text editor  Mastering the Linux command line and the GNU utilities (mkdir, cp, scp, etc.) Prerequisite for: CUDA programming Type: Hands-on Target audience: Rookie programmer Must: This session is a nice-to-have for those who need to develop fast scientific software.

Speaker: Olivier Mattelaer (UCLouvain/CISM)

22_11_C_CISM.pdf

C_lecture.tgz

2 Debugging and profiling scientific code, and commercial optimized libraries

When a piece of software does not work the way it is expected to, it needs debugging. Then, when it works, it needs profiling to remove the bottlenecks. This session will also present the standard optimized librairies that will allow you to code faster and more efficiently.
Contents: Debugging principles The GNU debugger (gdb) The Intel debugger Advanced features of Intel Cluster studio the support of MIC architecture (Xeon Phi) the Guided Auto Parallelism the Coarray Fortran support Intel MKL	Prerequisite: Being able to use SSH with private keys  Being familiar with a text editor  Mastering the Linux command line and the GNU utilities (mkdir, cp, scp, etc.) Passive knowledge of either C, Fortran, Octave, Python or R Working knowledge of C or Fortran Familiarity with OpenMP and MPI
Type: Hands-on Target audience: Programmers Must: This session is important for programmers who want to optimize their code for usage on a cluster.

Speaker: Bernard Van Renterghem (UCL CISM)

3 Introduction to structured programming with Fortran

Fortran is the historical language of scientific computing. Many often-used mathematical libraries used nowadays were writen initially in Fortran and have evolved with both the language and the hardware.
Contents: Historical perspective Syntax Printing and formatting Memory management Fortran I/O	Prerequisite: Being able to use SSH with private keys  Being familiar with a text editor  Mastering the Linux command line and the GNU utilities (mkdir, cp, scp, etc.) Type: Hands-on Target audience: Rookie programmer Must: This session is a nice-to-have for those who need to develop fast scientific software.

Speaker: Pierre-Yves Barriat (UCL/ELIC)

Slides (assets directory) and examples