The Train the Trainer Program is provided in conjunction with the regular course Parallel Programming Workshop (MPI, OpenMP and Advanced Topics). Whereas the regular course teaches parallel programming, this program is designed to train future trainers in parallel programming.
Too few people can offer parallel programming courses at the level needed by scientists and PhD students who want to learn how to parallelize a sequential application or to improve parallel applications. Within Europe, only a few HPC centres provide such courses at European or national level. We would like to support additional trainers and centres to also deliver such courses throughout Europe or at least in their own countries.
This course is a joint training event of HLRS, CASTIEL3 and SIDE, the German National Competence Centre for High-Performance Computing.
Location
HLRS, University of Stuttgart
Nobelstraße 19
70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Room 0.439 / Rühle Saal
Location and nearby accommodations
Fees
The following applies only to accepted participants according to the Prerequisites above.
This course is free of charge.
Only participants from institutions belonging to EU and EuroHPC JU member states can apply to this course.
Our course fee includes coffee breaks (in classroom courses only).
For more information, see the official course web page: https://www.hlrs.de/training/2026/PAR-TtT
Pre-required logistics
You are familiar with parallel programming with MPI and OpenMP on an advanced level and skilled in both programming languages C and Fortran (or Python for the MPI part).
Your goal: You want to provide MPI and OpenMP courses for other scientists and PhD students in your country, i.e., you would like to at least provide the first three days of the regular course as, e.g., a training block-course or also as flexible online learning modules.
Your centre (see "Background" here below) is affiliated to one National Competence Centre (NCC) of EuroCC.
Background:
(a) Your centre supports you to provide such PhD courses at your centre and has access to an HPC resource that allows MPI and OpenMP programming in C and Fortran (or Python for the MPI part). To this purpose, a centre may send two or three TtT participants together to this course. Additionally, you may have already participated as a regular participant in one of our MPI/OpenMP courses, so that you are already familiar with all the exercises.
Or (b), you as a future trainer would like to co-operate with a centre with the necessary course infrastructure in your country.
What does this Train the Trainer Program provide?
We provide you with all necessary teaching material on a personal basis, i.e., with the copyright to use it and to provide pdf or paper copies to the students in your PhD courses.
We provide all exercise material.
What are you supposed to do during the Train the Trainer Program?
You will listen the lectures, so that you can get familiar with the training material.
During the exercises, you will help the regular students with the exercises and correct their errors. The regular students are advised to request help if they are stuck for more than a minute. You will be trained to detect their problems as fast as possible (typically in less than a minute) and to provide the students with the needed help.
For this, and if possible, we will pair you with other TtT participants, so that you can help at a maximum of problems.
Timing of the Train the Trainer Program:
The Train the Trainer Program includes the curriculum from Monday until Friday according to the course agenda.
When the participants start with the exercise, all TtT participants will receive a short (5 minutes) briefing on important aspects and usual problems with this exercise.
The Train the Trainer Program starts on Monday with a short introductory meeting at 8:30 am.
On Thursday evening we will have an additional meeting and dinner for all participants of this TtT program.
Optionally, we can also meet during the few lectures that are not part of the TtT program (e.g., those by external lecturers), or in the morning 8:45-9:00 every day.
Remarks about the timing:
You should be present the whole time during the course week.
During the course week, you should be prepared to be totally offline from your regular business during the course hours. During the lectures, you should learn details about the slide content and how to teach it. During the exercises, you support the participants.
Please expect the TtT course to finish 30-60 minutes later than the official schedule of the regular course because of some additional discussions or reviews.
Additional prerequisites:
You are prepared to present one or two introductions to our MPI course chapters, i.e. from the beginning to before the first exercise. The slides are available in the MPI self-study material. You can choose between chapters 3 pt-to-pt (9 slides, ~15 Minutes), 8-1 sub-comms (9 slides, ~16 Minutes), 9-1 topologies (11 slides, ~20 Minutes), 12-1 datatypes (7 slides, ~14 Minutes), and 13-1 I/O (16 slides, ~25 Minutes). Please indicate in your application letter which two chapters you prefer. For recordings, please visit Self-Study Materials and look for the latest MPI course.
If you are accepted to the TtT course, you will receive four weeks before the course an updated pdf of the MPI and OpenMP course slides. The exercises are also available in the MPI self-study material. It is required that you prepare the MPI and OpenMP exercises before the course starts, so that you can assist the participants during the exercises.