MPCDF Online Course on "Python for HPC"

Career Center Workshop

Start: Nov 26, 2024 09:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
End: Nov 28, 2024 05:00 PM
Speaker: MPCDF Application group
Location: online
Room: Zoom
Host: MPCDF
Contact: careercenter@ipp.mpg.de

The Python programming language and its software ecosystem have become very popular in scientific computing for various reasons. Users not only implement prototypes for numerical experiments on small scales, but also develop parallel production codes, thereby partly replacing compiled languages such as C, C++, and Fortran. However, when following this approach it is crucial to pay special attention to performance.

This course teaches approaches to use Python efficiently and reasonably in a HPC environment. The first lecture gives a whirlwind tour through the Python programming language and the standard library. In the following, the lectures strongly focus on performance-related topics such as NumPy, Cython, Numba, compiled C- and Fortran extensions, profiling of Python and compiled code, parallelism using multiprocessing and mpi4py, parallel frameworks such as Dask, and efficient IO with HDF5. In addition, we will cover topics more related to software-engineering such as packaging, publishing, testing, and the semi-automated generation of documentation. Finally, basic visualization tasks using matplotlib and similar packages are discussed.

The lectures will be given based on Jupyter notebooks and will include many reusable code examples. For each topic, hands-on exercises are available and will be discussed in separate sessions. On the last day, there will be time for a general question & answer session.

Please register at

https://plan.events.mpg.de/e/mpcdf-python-for-hpc-2024

where further details, including the schedule, are available in addition.