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Students Taste the Joys of Supercomputing
Supercomputing's next generation gathered at ORNL's Joint Institute for Computational Sciences June 19 to get a taste of leadership computing on the NCCS's IBM Cheetah system.
About 40 graduate students and undergraduates-pursuing careers in math, chemistry, physics, biology, and computer science-attended "A Crash Course in Supercomputing" taught by Rebecca Hartman-Baker of ORNL's Computer Science and Mathematics Division. In it, they were able to sample computing at a level unavailable in the typical college environment.
Hartman-Baker introduced students to the UNIX operating system and tools for writing the highly parallel programs required by modern high-performance computers. The course also included a tour of the NCCS and the Everest visualization facility. Hartman-Baker, who noted that the tours helped make the material covered in the course seem more concrete, credited Don Frederick of the NCCS's User Assistance and Outreach Group with helping to arrange both the tours and the students' access to Cheetah.