The International HPC Certification Forum: A call for NZ contribution

The formal curriculum in higher education doesn't sufficiently cover the increasing need for training and education of researchers in High Performance Computing (HPC). To help resolve the issue for HPC centres, the the international HPC Certification Forum (HPC CF) was formed at the 2018 International Supercomputing Conference, developed from the Performance Conscious HPC (PeCoH) project in 2017 with the Hamburg HPC Competence Center. With the explicit goal of a "HPC Driving License" for researchers, the Forum provides an summative assessment across different fine-grained competencies, expressed as a skill and knowledge tree.

Whilst the HPC CF does not provide educational content or engage in delivery, the skills and competencies of the examinable content the HPC CF competency exams can serve as learning objectives for content and delivery providers, who also have the opportunity to provide feedback for errors, omissions, and new developments, creating an HPC training ecosystem.

Since the formation of the HPC CF, the Board has developed an extensive competency list and, in most recent months, has begin initial testing of competency exams. Consisting of representatives from various parts of the globe (Germany, United Kingdom, India, Australia) a call is made at this conference for increased participation from New Zealand, following the principles enunciated by the eResearchNZ 2022 of "Building Capability Together, Waihanga Āheitanga Kotahitanga".

References

Julian Kunkel, Weronika Filinger, Jean-Thomas Acquaviva, "Towards an HPC Certification Program", Journal of Computer Science Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, p88- 89, 2019

Julian Kunkel, Weronika Filinger, et al., "The HPC Certification Forum: Toward a Globally Acknowledged HPC Certification", Computing in Science & Engineering. July-Aug. pp. 110-114, vol. 22. 2020

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lev Lafayette is a Senior HPC DevOps Engineer at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Steering Board for the International HPC Certification Forum. Prior to this he worked at the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Timor-Leste, and the Parliament of Victoria. He collects degrees for fun and profit and has previously been extensively involved in the local Linux user community.