Visions:NoobiesTutorial
Abbreviated Names
ECM: Eric JS: Johannes KH: Kai CM: Christian Mauch CK: Christoph TP: Tom SS: Sebastian Schmitt PM: Paul AG: Andreas Grübl AH: Andreas Hartel BV: Bernhard Vogginger OB: Oliver Breitwieser MD: Markus Dorn
Meetings
Hardware F***-up Meeting
The hardware users' meeting is usually on Monday at 10:30/ENI. Managed by SS (backup: PM)
TMA Meeting
Usually Monday 13:30/ENI
Chip Development (HICANN DLS) Meeting
Tuesday at 9:00/ENI. Managed by JS.
FPGA Development
There's a FPGA meeting every Tuesday at 15:30/ENI. Logs and agenda can be found here. Managed by AG (backup: ECM).
PCB Meeting
TODO: Wednesday?? Managed by AG.
ASIC Meeting
Wednesday, 15:00? Glasbox I?
F9/Vision(s)' Group Meeting
Thursday at 9:00/ENI. Mandatory for all. Managed by JS.
Softies' Meeting
Thursday at 14:00/ENI. Mandatory for software developers. Logs and agenda can be found here. Managed by ECM.
Workplace
Computers
We use a Debian Jessie-based default installation. The configuration is automatically managed. In case of package requests, please ask KH. Bugs and requests should be posted here.
Space
There are some places in the "Werkstatt" building (room 501) and in the container building. In case of a transient shortage of spaces, internshippers and bachelors are expected to "fill up" (i.e. they do not have a static assignment to a specific place) all available places.
Communication
To stay informed (and to provide information to others) you should join F9's irc server on bldviz. The main channels are:
Channel | Topic |
---|---|
#softies
|
Software and stuff |
#hardies
|
Hardware |
#tma
|
Modeling |
#clusteraner
|
Cluster usage and announcements |
Clients:
- hexchat (GUI)
- weechat-curses (CLI)
- Pidgin (GUI) / finch (CLI)
You can access the channels in Pidigin by creating a new account (Accounts -> Manage Accounts) using the Protocol IRC, with your KIP-username and -password. And then joining the chatroom (Buddies -> Join a Chat) when using your IRC account. (Leave the password blank)
Accounts
Typically, you will need the following accounts:
- KIP-Account (which you have when you can read this)
- BrainScaleS-Account (which provides Access to the gitviz-Repository)
If you work on the waferscale hardware or need access to the computer cluster ask ECM (and get an introduction by your supervisor). If you do chip or FPGA development, you need ASIC permissions (ask Markus Dorn).
KIP
The KIP login is used for accounting and authentication on all F9 desktops as well as servers.
BrainScaleS
BrainScaleS Accounts are managed by Bjoern and you should write him an email that you need one. Access to repositories is managed by dedicated project managers (i.e. your supervisor can help you). In extreme cases, you can ask ECM/KH/JS -- the redmine administrators -- for help.
Cluster Access
The F9 cluster is part of the BrainScaleS and HBP hardware systems. In times of idle nodes (i.e. the associated neuromorphic hardware parts are idle too), conventional software simulations can be run on the system. Please note, the cluster's main objective is controlling neuromorphic hardware and not number crunching. Having a KIP-Account gives you a home folder (distributed filesystem, AFS) on all machines running the default installation. However, this is not sufficient for cluster usage. You need a "wang" home and cluster access permissions. Both is managed by ECM and KH. In case of a missing cluster_home you will see an error message when you lock into a compute server.
The frontend/login nodes are named:
- ice
- ignatz
and you can access them via (example for ice, but works with any other name too)
ssh -X ice
Server Usage
The machines mentioned above are not the compute nodes themselves, but are only the frontend to access the compute cluster. Large jobs (i.e. CPU/IO hogs or long-running things) on the frontend node will be killed by the administrators. So for heavy work (read everything after the bug/syntax fixing) please dispatch execution to the cluster:
srun [your command]
The default job gets 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM. If your code runs in parallel or needs more memory, please specify this (e.g. 4 CPUs, 8GB RAM):
srun -c 4 --mem 8G [your command]
To run the job in background, please use:
sbatch --wrap [your command]
This creates a slurm-[jobid].out
log file containing all the console output.
In order to check the status of your jobs the command squeue
can be used.
Jobs can be aborted (cancelled) by using:
scancel [jobid]
Accessing the BrainScaleS hardware is only possible via the wafer
, nmpm
and test_wafer
queues.
Spikey is accessible via spikey
queue. To select a specific spikey, the --gres=SpikeyXYZ
option is used.
As a side note the compute nodes have localtime set to UTC, so all logging times will be offset to local time. However, this should never be a problem as you should always work with non-local date/time (e.g. UNIX epoch, UTC or something similar).
FPGA & ASIC
Servers, software and libraries are managed by MD.
Servers
There are several login nodes for ASIC work, e.g., vmimas
, vtitan
, vrhea
.
Using The Hardware
The HBP SP9 Guidebook provides introductions to both, the Spikey system and the BrainScaleS system.
Core Hardware Components
For the BrainScaleS system, the NMPM hardware specification provides detailed information; see Jenkins doc job "HBP Spec". TODO: Write something about hardware stuff.
Data Management
The policy on F9-specific data storage is:
Mount Point | Storage Backend | Redundancy | Backup Strategy | Usable Size | User Quota | Typical Application |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
/afs/kip/user/USERNAME
|
HDD | RAID | yes (1 version) | 10G | Distributed home directory | |
/scratch
|
no | Scratch/temp data; might be deleted at any time | ||||
/wang
|
HDD | RAID6 (2R) | no | 13T | 0.3T | General purpose |
/ley
|
HDD | RAID6 (2R) | yes (ADSM; 1 version) | 7T | 0.1T | Important stuff (not too large!) |
/loh
|
4x Archive HDD | RAID5 (1R) | no | 16T | 1T | Archives of machines, homes, etc. |
???
|
SSD | no |
Software Development
Most (all?) software developers work remotely on server machines. Tools like screen or tmux can keep your session open between reconnects.
Git
As a general rule, everything should be tracked in git. Period. If you hear git for the first time I highly recommend spending an hour going through a git tutorial of your choice (for example you can take the one [[]])
Whether your own work should be tracked in the group gitviz or not, should be decided together with your supervisor. But you will need to checkout at least the nnsapling repo for read access. If you wont track your own work in the gitviz, KIP offers a gitserver with upto 15 repos per user under git.kip.uni-heidelberg.de
License
Keep your code contributions (L)GPL-clean because we might want to publish it on a public web site. If you copy code from somewhere, verify license compatibility and mention the source as a code comment!
Code Review
For core software components (and other repositories involving multiple developers), we use gerrit as a code review tool.
Continuous Integration
We encourage continuous and automatic testing, see F9's Jenkins Server.
Bugreports
Should be posted immediately in the redmine project associated with the module that produced the error. The title should be descriptive (it may only be changed by 'project managers' after creating the ticket). As a general rule, the traceback is necessary for the developer to find the actual bug, but the more relevant information are given the easier the fix. Ideally, you create a minimal example that reproduces the problem and upload the script, including the module's loaded.
Core Software Components
pyNN
An abstract model language to specify neural networks, independent of the actual simulator used. Typical usecase is to use it as frontend for simulations in nest or neuron. Documentation is available on its webpage (sort of at least) [1], in order to get started it is best to ask someone for a simple working script and trying to reproduce it with minor changes (ideally your supervisor has some propositions for you)
PyHMF
The BrainScaleS-hardware-specific PyNN implementation/backend. Maintainers: ECM
PyNN.hardware/PyHAL
The Spikey-hardware-specific PyNN implementation/backend. Maintainers: TP
Cake
Calibration framework for the BrainScaleS hardware. Maintainers: SS and MK
Euter/Ester
The C++-layer providing a representation of neuronal network descriptions (generated by PyHMF) -- used for BrainScaleS hardware. Maintainers: ECM, CK
Marocco
The translation layer which converts abstract neuronal networks into a hardware bit stream (i.e. a valid hardware configuration) -- used for BrainScaleS hardware. Maintainers: ECM, SS
StHALbe, hicann-system
StHAL, HALbe and hicann-system are the hardware access layers -- used for BrainScaleS hardware. Maintainers: ECM, CK
SpikeyHAL
Spikey hardware access layer. Maintainers: TP
HostARQ
The communication protocol stack for communication between the BrainScaleS hardware (FCP FPGAs) and host computers. Maintainers: (E)CM
ESS
The Executable System Specification is a BrainScaleS hardware simulator. Originally developed as a chip verification software by AG, it evolved into a neuronal network simulator (by BV). Maintainer: BV, OB
Modeling Software Packages
SBS
Allows for simple creation and sampling of and with Boltzmann machines of pyNN neurons. Tutorial Maintainer: OB