Date: May 20, 2026 12:00pm-1:00pm
Instructor: Ann Allan
This colloquium will help new users navigate Compute Ontario Summer School Registration and Schedule. The session will cover creating a Compute Ontario Training Account, how to log-in, how to enrol in courses and some helpful tips about this year’s schedule. A brief overview of the summer school content will be reviewed and there will be the opportunity for new users to ask questions.
This year the school is taking place from June 1 to June 19 and offers a comprehensive curriculum packed with over 40 courses. Delivered by experts in the field, these sessions cover a wide range of topics including Advanced Research Computing (ARC), High Performance Computing (HPC), Research Data Management (RDM), and Research Software (RS). With presentations and workshops available at introductory to intermediate levels, there is something for everyone.
Many researchers approach the national compute clusters available through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada as if they were interchangeable, expecting the same workflows, software environments, and usage models everywhere. Yet the Trillium supercomputer at SciNet was designed with a different purpose and architecture than the other clusters. Understanding these differences can significantly improve productivity and research outcomes.
Trillium was built to support the largest scientific computations. This influences not only its hardware, but also how users access and use the system, despite the many features it shares with other clusters. In this colloquium, we will discuss the why and how of Trillium’s login requirements, job scheduling, and storage systems.
We will also explore which research computations and workflows are best suited to Trillium, and which may be better served by the general-purpose clusters. Finally, we will show how interactive work remains possible through Trillium’s debug partition and OnDemand service.