The Urban Data Lab (UDL) is attending the 2020 UBC Research Computing Summer Sessions August 17-28, 2020. This event will be research-focused introductions to GNU/Linux, Jupyter, software development practices as well as intermediate-level sessions on topics such as Software configuration management and using the GPU capabilities of UBC’s Sockeye high-performance computing (HPC).
Advanced Research Computing at UBC
UBC is growing in its demand for advanced research computing which involves big data, large computational power, modelling or visualization that cannot be handled by standard computing infrastructure. UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) is dedicated for researchers across all disciplines working with large data and computational needs. Partnering with Compute Canada, ARC offers free services and resources for the UBC community to take advantage of high-performance computing (HPC) facilities.
UBC ARC Sockeye is the new HPC platform that features nearly 16,000 CPU cores, 200 GPUs, and more than 20 petabytes of storage capacity.
- UBC staff and faculty are eligible to apply for Sockeye access to conduct computationally intensive research.
Sockeye supplements the national platform for digital research infrastructure in order to meet immediate needs of UBC researchers.
- Local computing resources such as computing and storage.
- Security for sensitive or confidential data such as health data.
- Assists early-career researchers in bridging to national platforms.
UBC ARC REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing research data collection instruments. Two instances of REDCap are available to the UBC research community.
- UBC ARC REDCap Flex runs on the Standard release of REDCap. The instance is kept up-to-date with the current version of REDCap and its latest features. REDCap Flex is suitable for most research projects.
- UBC ARC REDCap Solid runs on the Long Term Support release of REDCap. Updates are only implemented to address security and stability issues. REDCap Solid is more suitable for projects that require a non-changing environment, such as registered clinical trials, or where the sensitivity of the data being collected mandates additional security controls and governance.
UBC ARC also provides support and resources for high-performance computing.
- Grant proposals
- Advanced research computing system architecture and solution design
- Domain-specific consultations for data management
- Data privacy and security
- UBC ARC Sockeye
- WestGrid Computing resources and collaborations
- WestGrid and Compute Canada visualization tools
Software, services, and other resources offered through UBC, WestGrid and Compute Canada
What UDL Will Learn
Urban Data Lab will attend the 2020 UBC Research Computing Summer Sessions to learn more about Sockeye and research data management. We are interested in the following areas.
Software development (Git) and Linux system
Sockeye jobs scheduling and submitting
Data management (Globus)
Survey tools and sensitive data
Sockeye use cases and user experience
Non-linear developments in team coding projects
Submit GPU jobs through the Sockeye scheduler
Globus interface to access storage systems and facilitate data sharing
Survey tool options and best practices in related to sensitive data
Research projects and user experience in Sockeye
