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Conference call notes 20171206

Kenneth Hoste edited this page Dec 7, 2017 · 4 revisions

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Notes on the 91st EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday December 6th 2017 (5pm - 6pm CEST)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (8):

  • Damian Alvarez (JSC, Germany) + guest Aurelio Rodriguez (CESGA)
  • Maxime Boissonneault (McGill University, Canada)
  • Fotis Georgatos (Illumina, UK)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Adam Huffman (Big Data Institute, University of Oxford)
  • Teo Ioannis (CSCS, Switserland)
  • Bart Oldeman McGill University, Canada
  • Rafael Alejandro Sarmiento Perez (CSCS, Switserland)

Agenda

  • outlook to EasyBuild v3.5.0
    • recent changes in develop + overview of remaining PRs planned for v3.5.0
  • discussion on providing Python bindings for multiple Python versions in a single installation (Maxime, Compute Canada)
  • early look at options for 2018a common toolchains
  • Q&A

Notes

Outlook to EasyBuild v3.5.0
Installing Python bindings for different Python versions
2018a toolchains
  • see post on mailing list: https://lists.ugent.be/wws/arc/easybuild/2017-12/msg00019.html
  • probably sticking with GCC 6.4.0 (unless GCC 6.5.0 is released...)
    • GCC 7.x not supported yet in Intel 2018 update 1, nor in latest CUDA
  • stick to binutils 2.28 so GCCcore/6.4.0 easyconfigs can be reused?
    • take another at release notes
    • no issues on Skylake with binutils 2.28 by JSC/ComputeCanada
  • Open MPI: stick with stable 2.1.2
    • 3.0.0 is too fresh?
  • OpenBLAS still at 0.2.20
    • should start considering alternatives...
      • ATLAS? BLIS?
    • Intel MKL could be considered since it's free now (but not open source though)?
    • very liberal license
    • some potential concerns on AMD systems (needs env vars)
    • would MKL + Open MPI work fine for ScaLAPACK?
      • BLACS in MKL is available for both impi and ompi
    • OpenBLAS 0.2.20 + patches doesn't build correctly on KNL
      • max. thread number (256) is exceeded for 68-core KNL (4-way mt)
  • intel/2018a: 2018 update 1 versions of Intel compilers, MPI & MKL
Other topics
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