It is typical in High Performance Computing (HPC) courses to give students access to HPC platforms so that they can benefit from hands-on learning opportunities. Using such platforms, however, comes with logistical and pedagogical challenges. For instance, a logistical challenge is that access to representative platforms must be granted to students, which can be difficult for some institutions or course modalities; and a pedagogical challenge is that hands-on learning opportunities are constrained by the configurations of these platforms. A way to address these challenges is to instead simulate program executions on arbitrary HPC platform configurations. In this work we focus on simulation in the specific context of distributed-memory computing and MPI programming education. While using simulation in this context has been explored in previous works, our approach offers two crucial advantages. First, students write standard MPI programs and can both debug and analyze the performance of their programs in simulation mode. Second, large-scale executions can be simulated in short amounts of time on a single standard laptop computer. This is possible thanks to SMPI, an MPI simulator provided as part of SimGrid. After detailing the challenges involved when using HPC platforms for HPC education and providing background information about SMPI, we present SMPI Courseware. SMPI Courseware is a set of in-simulation assignments that can be incorporated into HPC courses to provide students with hands-on experience for distributed-memory computing and MPI programming learning objectives. We describe some these assignments, highlighting how simulation with SMPI enhances the student learning experience. 
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                            Implementation of the High-Performance Computing Summer Institute at Jackson State University
                        
                    
    
            Between May 25, 2023 and June 21, 2023, we hosted the inaugural four-week High-Performance Computing Summer Institute at Jackson State University. This endeavor was made possible through the support of a three-year NSF CISE-MSI grant. The primary objective of this Summer Institute revolved around the engagement, education, and empowerment of minority and underrepresented students in the realm of High-Performance Computing (HPC) within the field of engineering. Nine undergraduate students with diverse background were recruited to participate in this program.  Throughout the program, we immersed these students in a comprehensive curriculum that covered various critical facets of HPC. This curriculum encompassed hands-on instruction in Linux operating system command-line operations, C programming within the Linux environment, fundamental HPC concepts, parallel computing utilizing the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library, and GPU computing through OpenCL. Additionally, we delved into foundational aspects of fluid mechanics, geometric modeling, mesh generation, flow simulation via our in-house flow solvers, and the visualization of solutions. At the end of the program, every participant was tasked with delivering an oral presentation and submitting a written report encapsulating their acquired knowledge and experiences during the program. We are excited to share a detailed overview of our program's implementation with our audience. This includes insights into our utilization of ChatGPT to enhance C programming learning and our suggestion of the NSF ACCESS resources to gain access to HPC systems. We are proud to announce that the program has achieved remarkable success, as evidenced by the positive feedback we received from the participants. 
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                            - Award ID(s):
- 2219542
- PAR ID:
- 10534444
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Journal on Engineering, Science and Technology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal on Engineering, Science and Technology
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2642-4088
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 112 to 131
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Engineering education High performance computing summer institute ChatGPT
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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