Roadmap: Getting Started on Frontera
Frontera is the largest academic supercomputer in the world. Located at The University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Frontera is tailored towards the very largest of scientific computing projects. This quick-start guide covers an architecture overview, the user environment, file storage and data movement, compiling code, and running jobs.
Objectives
After you complete this roadmap, you should be able to:
- Summarize Frontera’s system architecture
- Explain the steps to get a Frontera allocation
- Configure the shell environment
- Explain how to store and move data
- Compile a C/C++ or Fortran code with appropriate compiler options
- Identify the correct queue for a job
- Explain the procedure for submitting a job to the Slurm scheduler
Prerequisites
Frontera is a leadership-class system, so its prospective users are already likely to have a high degree of familiarity and experience with HPC and parallel computing. The pace of this presentation is meant to be relatively brisk, for that reason.
With that being understood, there are no formal prerequisites for this Virtual Workshop topic. The following forms of preparation are recommended:
- A working knowledge of Linux; otherwise try working through the Linux roadmap first.
- A basic knowledge of Slurm, for the topics on running and managing jobs; otherwise try working through the Submitting Jobs topic of the Stampede2 Environment roadmap. This may be an especially helpful reference for those new to TACC as well.
Requirements
You will need access to Frontera through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).
Access to Frontera can be requested by submitting an allocation request to TACC.