Supercomputing in plain English: Teaching high performance computing to inexperienced programmers

Although the field of High Performance Computing (HPC) has been evolving rapidly, the development of standardized software systems – MPI, OpenMP, LAPACK, PETSc and others – has in principle made HPC accessible to a wider community. However, relatively few scientists and engineers take advantage of computational science and engineering (CSE) in their research, in part because of the considerable degree of sophistication about computing that HPC appears to require. Yet the fundamental concepts of HPC are fairly straightforward and have remained relatively stable over time. These facts raise an important question: can scientists and engineers with relatively modest computing experience learn HPC concepts well enough to take advantage of them in their research? To answer this question, HPC educators must address several issues. First, what are the fundamental issues and concepts in CSE? Second, what are the fundamental issues and concepts in HPC? Third, how can these ideas be expressed in a manner that is clear to a person with relatively modest computing experience? Finally, is classroom exposure sufficient, or is guidance required to assist investigators in incorporating HPC into their research codes? We discuss an effort, now underway, to develop materials that express sophisticated scientific computing concepts in a manner accessible to a broad audience. These materials, now partially completed, will address many of the above questions, employing plain English, analogies and narratives to target this population. In addition, we examine a programmatic approach that incorporates not only the use of these materials but also the crucial contribution of followup. Send correspondence to Henry Neeman ([email protected])