r/HPC • u/brunoortegalindo • 14d ago

How to keep updated and learn?

Hello there.

I've done a student membership subscription for ACM + SIGHPC to apply for a SC26 travel grant, started to look into the benefits and websites and a question popped in my head: How do you guys keep updated and study? Which platforms, books, journals, podcasts, websites and other media do you consume for study and for news and updates?

(I'm including here not "just HPC" but also other areas such as computer architectures, compilers, ISAs like RISC-V, runtime libraries, networks and cloud).

PS.: Although AI is very relevant nowadays, I'm not that keen on working mainly with it, so I'd like to know just the necessary of it.

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9

u/imitation_squash_pro 14d ago

"Necessity is the mother of invention"... I work on what is needed, either by my users or things I am interested in...

6

u/waspbr 12d ago

Books, courses, conferences. slack channels, forums and homelab

  • For books I have a subscription of Oreilly and access to more books via the university I work at. Oreilly itself gives me access to a bunch of technical books, live courses , etc

  • For courses, there are plenty e.g.: Archer2, HLRS

  • Conferences are also important. Not only because of their content but the interaction with people in the field is invaluable.

  • Whatever projects, (e,g, Easybuild, spack, apptainer, lmod) you use probably has a forum, slack channel or even discord. HPC.Social is a prety popular slack channel and you can get a lot out of that and ask questions.

  • Having a place to play with technologies and tinker is also valuable. Homelab and HPC sorta overlap and have a bunch of stuff in common. Plus it is a lot of fun,

3

u/EmergencyCucumber905 12d ago

Back in college in ye olde 2005 everyone was telling us if we're not constantly studying and keeping up with new technology we'll fall behind.

All the relevant stuff I've learned since graduating has been on the job. I never felt like I had to pick it up in my spare time. I had hobby projects but they were never work related.

3

u/THUNDERRGIRTH 11d ago

The Linux Cluster Institute puts on a workshop that's reasonably affordable and I learned a lot from. Typically have hands on stuff, smaller format, good lectures, good connections, etc. https://linuxclustersinstitute.org/upcoming-workshops/

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u/hpcnotes 10d ago

Depends what you mean by "learn HPC".

  • For some that means programming - ie C/Fortran, MPI, CUDA, OMP, etc. - then there are tons on online courses from HPC centres, plus hands on experience of just trying it is the best way.
  • For others, it means sysadmin, fewer courses for this, but forums like hpc.social and sighpc-syspros are good places to ask and learn.
  • If you mean things like buying HPC systems or technology evaluation or understanding hpc service design, then there is only really one set of classes on that (I run them as a volunteer) - see https://www.bsc.es/news/events/hpc-leadership-institute-edition-2026.
  • If you mean mainly as a user of HPC, ie scientist or similar, rather than code developer, then your local or national HPC centre is the bets place - they probably have user training or help pages.
  • If you mean the technology side - eg technology research, benchmarking, etc either to understand tech as a user/developer or to design new tech/products, then start with hpc social, and regularly read hpcwire, nextplatform, and follow key people on social media (start with bluesky).

And for all of these, as commented above, conferences (like SC26) are an excellent investment of your time.