[NLPL Task Force (A)] Abel for teaching

[Stephan Oepen]

great; thanks for the update!

oe


On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 at 12:26 Gongbo Tang <gongbo.tang at lingfil.uu.se> wrote:

> Hi Stephan,
>
>
> It is great! Thanks for providing Abel for the teaching.
>
>
> I designed small NMT assignments for the students. Each job only takes ~10
> minutes so I do not think that they spent a lot of time on queuing.
>
>
> For the larger course project. Only 3 groups (~7 students) have used Abel
> to run gpu jobs and they all satisfied with that as well.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Gongbo
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Stephan Oepen <oe at ifi.uio.no>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 30, 2019 10:28:43 AM
> *To:* Sara Stymne
> *Cc:* Gongbo Tang; Joakim Nivre; infrastructure
> *Subject:* Re: Abel for teaching
>
> 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
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
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>
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