[NLPL Task Force (A)] Abel for teaching

Wed Oct 30 09:28:43 UTC 2019

hi sara and gongbo,

out of curiosity, how is your class and teaching usage of Abel going?  i
hope students actually get to run gpu jobs without too long wait times?

best wishes, oe

On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 at 13:01 Sara Stymne <sara.stymne at lingfil.uu.se> wrote:

> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> It seems from the helpdesk conversation you cc'd us on that all is fine
> for us using Abel. It's a pity that there was nothing to be done about the
> queue, also for our future use, of course. But it should be workable at
> least for student projects, maybe less for labs, but we will find a
> solution to that.
>
>
> Thank you so much for your effort in helping us out with this! If you need
> any description/report of the outcome for the final report of NLPL, let me
> know.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Sara
> ------------------------------
> *Från:* Sara Stymne
> *Skickat:* den 27 augusti 2019 14:10:17
> *Till:* Gongbo Tang; Stephan Oepen
>
> *Kopia:* infrastructure; Joakim Nivre
> *Ämne:* SV: Abel for teaching
>
>
> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> Did you get an answer from USIT yet, about if it will work out to use
> Abel? It  would be useful for us to know quite soon, so that we can plan
> and prepare the student assignments.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Sara
> ------------------------------
> *Från:* Gongbo Tang
> *Skickat:* den 23 augusti 2019 09:25:05
> *Till:* Stephan Oepen
> *Kopia:* infrastructure; Joakim Nivre; Sara Stymne
> *Ämne:* Re: Abel for teaching
>
>
> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> OpenNMT 0.2.1 would be enough for the course. I will do some testing next
> week. Thanks!
>
>
> Best,
>
> Gongbo
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Sara Stymne
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 21, 2019 10:39:04 AM
> *To:* Stephan Oepen
> *Cc:* infrastructure; Joakim Nivre; Gongbo Tang
> *Subject:* SV: Abel for teaching
>
>
> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> I cc:d Gongbo as well. We have now discussed toolkits and openNMT is fine.
> Gongbo will look into which version we need, and get back to you.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Sara
> ------------------------------
> *Från:* Sara Stymne
> *Skickat:* den 20 augusti 2019 10:43:08
> *Till:* Stephan Oepen
> *Kopia:* infrastructure; Joakim Nivre
> *Ämne:* SV: Abel for teaching
>
>
> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> Thanks for checking all this out. Abel sounds good, then, and I hope USIT
> will be positive as well! Treating it as an NLPL use case really makes
> sense.
>
>
> I will meet with Gongbo tomorrow, and discuss tool kits. I will get back
> to you again after that.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Sara
> ------------------------------
> *Från:* Stephan Oepen <oe at ifi.uio.no>
> *Skickat:* den 19 augusti 2019 21:36:11
> *Till:* Sara Stymne
> *Kopia:* infrastructure; Joakim Nivre
> *Ämne:* Re: Abel for teaching
>
> hi again, sara,
>
> we have received confirmation in the meantime that Abel is expected to
> remain operational (on a 'best-effort' basis) until at least
> mid-november, and that most users are expected to migrate to Saga in
> september.  i will then formally ask USIT to acknowledge that we are
> planning on this teaching use case under the NLPL umbrella, and
> hopefully they will confirm that this is a good idea.
>
> most of the NMT infrastructure in NLPL is installed on Taito only,
> however, reflecting a division of labor we had agreed on a couple of
> years ago.  there is ONMT (0.2.1) available on Abel, though, and i too
> will have a student this fall experimenting with that.  so, if that
> sound like sufficient pre-installed software support to you, maybe all
> is good already?  if not, we should discuss what software you would
> ideally like to use.
>
> best wishes, oe
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 1:27 PM Sara Stymne <sara.stymne at lingfil.uu.se>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Stephan,
> >
> > Thanks for your fast answer!
> >
> > I forgot to mention that the Swedish option unfortunately didn't work
> out. We were not allowed to use it for teaching.
> >
> > We need one NMT toolkit. The labs and projects will actually be run by
> Gongbo Tang, one of our PhD students, who is in China this week, so I don't
> know his preference for toolkit. I'll get back with that info as soon as I
> know, which is most likely next week. Hopefully one of the toolkits already
> installed through NLPL, will work.
> >
> > As for system, I don't have a clear preference. Maybe Abel is a bit more
> safe, since it should not be affected by possible delays, I guess. And it
> would be convenient that a lot of toolkits and corpora are already
> available there.
> >
> > Best,
> > Sara
> >
> >
> >
> > 14 aug 2019 kl. 11:58 skrev Stephan Oepen <oe at ifi.uio.no>:
> >
> > > hi again, sara,
> > >
> > > i am copying the NLPL infrastructure task force and joakim (member of
> > > the steering group), as i find this an interesting question, where
> > > ideally we should come up with a good solution for future occasions!
> > >
> > > you had mentioned before the summer, that you were also looking for
> > > gpu acccess from one of the swedish centers, but it sounds as if you
> > > are currently not very optimistic about that?
> > >
> > > the situation in norway is as follows: the Abel successor (Saga) is
> > > completing its successful trial period these days and will likely go
> > > in production in early september.  Saga has 32 modern gpus, so with a
> > > bit of luck there should be some capacity between mid-september and
> > > early november (i expect we will perceive a shortage of gpu capacity
> > > again soon enough, though, possibly well before the end of the year).
> > >
> > > at the same time, Abel will probably remain in production until
> > > sometime in november, and one could also speculate on the transition
> > > of users to Saga freeing up gpu capacity there.  my impression from
> > > talking to yves earlier this year is that the old K20 gpus actually
> > > are fully sufficient for decent job sizes and training times using
> > > OpenNMT.
> > >
> > > for either of these two scenarios, i am thinking we should request a
> > > kind of confirmation from the NLPL infrastructure task force and from
> > > the system administrators (primarily USIT, both for Abel and Saga),
> > > for example regarding general availability of Saga by mid-september or
> > > remaining life time for Abel until november.
> > >
> > > among the two candidate scenarios above, would you have a clear
> > > preference?  any comments or words of wisdom from other infrastructure
> > > members?
> > >
> > > in terms of software, what would you need?
> > >
> > > best wishes, oe
> > >
> > > On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 11:41 AM Sara Stymne <
> sara.stymne at lingfil.uu.se> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hi Stephan, and others!
> > >>
> > >> I just wanted to check if there is any progress on this.
> > >>
> > >> Best,
> > >> Sara
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> 20 jun 2019 kl. 12:56 skrev Sara Stymne <sara.stymne at lingfil.uu.se>:
> > >>
> > >> The course will run September to the beginning of November. I expect
> them to need gpu from around mid September. There will be around 20
> students, but they will be working in pairs, so around 10 student groups.
> > >>
> > >> Best,
> > >> Sara
> > >>
> > >> The course will run September to the beginning of November. I expect
> them to need gpu from around mid September. There will be around 20
> students, but they will be working in pairs, so around 10 student groups.
> > >>
> > >> Best,
> > >> Sara
> > >>
> > >> ---- Stephan Oepen skrev ----
> > >>
> > >> hi sara,
> > >>
> > >> i am taking the liberty of copying the NLPL steering group (which
> > >> subsumes the infrastructure task force), because you raise an
> > >> interesting question: availability of gpu resources, and their use in
> > >> a teaching scenario.
> > >>
> > >>> I am teaching our MT course this autumn, and we're planning to
> introduce more NMT. To have any type of reasonable lab and project
> assignments, we will need GPU's, though. I am trying to figure out how to
> manage that. I have also checked with a Swedish cluster. But if that fails,
> do you think it would it be OK to use Abel within NLPL for our master
> students, and have them do some NMT tasks there?
> > >>
> > >> in principle, i would say: yes.  but just now it is hard to predict
> > >> how things will play out in practice.  Abel has few and old gpu nodes,
> > >> and this past semester there have been periods when one had to wait
> > >> for at least several days before getting a gpu job to run.  Abel will
> > >> be replaced by a new system, called Saga, starting (hopefully) already
> > >> in august this year.  this may mean that Abel load will be
> > >> substantially lighter in the fall semester, but it may also mean that
> > >> Abel becomes unavailable before the end of the year.
> > >>
> > >> so, one could then ask the same question about Saga.  in principle, i
> > >> would again say that NLPL is intended to facility HPC use in research
> > >> and (advanced) teaching.  the NMT software and data you will want to
> > >> use are likely part of the NLPL infrastructure (and if not, maybe
> > >> should be); teachning NMT, as you point out, is hardly feasible
> > >> without gpu access.  so what are we going to do, if not slip these
> > >> students in on the NLPL systems?
> > >>
> > >> exactly over which time period will your class need gpu resources?
> > >> and do you have an estimate of the number of active students?
> > >>
> > >> best wishes, oe
> > >> hi sara,
> > >>
> > >> i am taking the liberty of copying the NLPL steering group (which
> > >> subsumes the infrastructure task force), because you raise an
> > >> interesting question: availability of gpu resources, and their use in
> > >> a teaching scenario.
> > >>
> > >> I am teaching our MT course this autumn, and we're planning to
> introduce more NMT. To have any type of reasonable lab and project
> assignments, we will need GPU's, though. I am trying to figure out how to
> manage that. I have also checked with a Swedish cluster. But if that fails,
> do you think it would it be OK to use Abel within NLPL for our master
> students, and have them do some NMT tasks there?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> in principle, i would say: yes.  but just now it is hard to predict
> > >> how things will play out in practice.  Abel has few and old gpu nodes,
> > >> and this past semester there have been periods when one had to wait
> > >> for at least several days before getting a gpu job to run.  Abel will
> > >> be replaced by a new system, called Saga, starting (hopefully) already
> > >> in august this year.  this may mean that Abel load will be
> > >> substantially lighter in the fall semester, but it may also mean that
> > >> Abel becomes unavailable before the end of the year.
> > >>
> > >> so, one could then ask the same question about Saga.  in principle, i
> > >> would again say that NLPL is intended to facility HPC use in research
> > >> and (advanced) teaching.  the NMT software and data you will want to
> > >> use are likely part of the NLPL infrastructure (and if not, maybe
> > >> should be); teachning NMT, as you point out, is hardly feasible
> > >> without gpu access.  so what are we going to do, if not slip these
> > >> students in on the NLPL systems?
> > >>
> > >> exactly over which time period will your class need gpu resources?
> > >> and do you have an estimate of the number of active students?
> > >>
> > >> best wishes, oe
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> När du har kontakt med oss på Uppsala universitet med e-post så
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> > >>
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