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Jay Boisseau and Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
The National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) includes five resource partners that provide HPC resources (including CRAY PVPs and T3Es) for over 5000 users. NPACI strives to provide the highest caliber of user services by combining and leveraging the staff expertise of the resource partners. Coordinating the efforts of different sites to develop synergy and not suffer from increased overhead demands careful planning, flexible procedures, and effective tools. We present some of the plans, procedures and tools developed by the NPACI Resources Working Group and NPACI Scientific Computing Services to offer consulting, training, documentation, and other user services to enable computational scientists to excel.
Lynda Lester
In this paper we talk about what to do and what not to do in creating an electronic newsletter or magazine (webzine) for users on the WWW. We explore four topic areas: "cool" vs. content (how "cool" animations can interfere with information retrieval, the importance of user-driven content); 2) cross-platform constraints (monitors, computers, browsers, connection speeds); 3) information architecture (home page, navigation aids, site structure, predictive links); and 4) design and style (visual appearance, writing for the web, creativity).
Guy Robinson
This paper will describe ARSC experiences in the operation of MPP Cray systems. In particular issues of user/center interaction will be considered with regard to:
- education in and use of the latest software tools and hardware features
- dealing with parallel experts and novices
- system configuration issues
- how to ensure the best use is made of the available resources by all users
- what to change in the system configuration and what/how to change users' practices
- ensuring users make full use of advanced computational methods, both in terms of system hardware/software developments and by exploiting suitable algorithms.
It is hoped that the talk will promote discussion of the need for centers to become more involved with users and how this can be achieved.
Leslie Southern
In the fall of 1997 the Ohio Supercomputer Center (Center) installed two high performance computing (HPC) systems, a CRAY T90 and a CRAY T3E. These systems replaced a CRAY Y-MP and a CRAY T3D, two of our most utilized systems. The transition required the rapid transfer of information to a wide user community who was dispersed throughout the state of Ohio. Migration techniques, hardware descriptions, software capabilities, and usage information were quickly delivered via our Web Site. Training courses were developed and offerings presented at multiple user sites. It was clear that the demand was much larger than the time and resources available. The short-term solution was to put the training offerings on the Web Site. In addition to providing the training materials, we included the audio (i.e., instructor's voice and audience's questions and comments) from the lectures. This paper provides an overview of the Center, user community, and training offerings. It also describes the hardware and software components required, methods employed, and experiences gained by the synchronization process.
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