PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, organizes a Winter School on Petascale Computing from February 10–13, 2009 at the training Center of the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE Academy) in Athens, Greece. The event is hosted by the Greek Research and Technology Network with the contribution of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), and addresses potential users of future Petascale systems in Europe.

Researchers and students from Europe and beyond will receive advanced training in programming models and optimization techniques, MPI/OpenMP and hybrid programming and profiling. The first three days of the Winter School will focus on the in-depth presentation for thorough understanding of these HPC (High Performance Computing) topics during morning lectures followed by hands-on training in the afternoon. The last day will be dedicated to a novel multiprocessor architecture, with all-day parallel lectures and hands-on training.
To enable students to solve problems in scalable scientific computing, access will be provided to two PRACE prototype systems: The Power 6 system at the SARA Computing and Networking Services in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Cell system at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) in Spain.
“As HPC is gaining more and more interest both in Europe and worldwide, it is straightforward that the training needs on HPC topics will grow proportionally. The PRACE project is leading the HPC efforts in Europe and one of its main axes has been the formulation of high level training sessions, which will allow participants to improve their HPC skills and get in touch with the latest technological achievements at the same time. This constitutes the objective of the Winter School, and the main idea, according to which the School’s program has been defined”, says Nikos Tsakiris, the chair of the PRACE Petascale Winter School Program Committee and application expert at GRNET/AUTH.
The Winter School is part of the PRACE project’s education and training program, which aims at preparing and initiating a European HPC education and training for scalable computing. It follows the very the successful Summer School held in Stockholm, Sweden, and includes advanced topics identified in the recent survey on HPC training and education needs that PRACE has carried out .
The number of participants is limited to 40. The full program and how to register for the PRACE Winter School can be found at: http://pracewinterschool.grnet.gr/
More information: Contact prace-winter-pc@fz-juelich.de

About PRACE: The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) prepares the creation of a persistent pan-European HPC service, consisting of several tier-0 centres providing European researchers with access to capability computers and forming the top level of the European HPC ecosystem. PRACE is a project funded in part by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme. The PRACE project receives funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° RI-211528.

Area of interest