This introduction provides hands-on information about working with high performance computing (HPC) at the RWTH Aachen University’s IT Center for users of the CLAIX-2023 HPC system. It is the basis for the follow-up event PPCES 2026. It focus on CLAIX-2023, the cluster that has been installed end of 2023 at the RWTH Aachen University’s IT Center.

The workshop will follow the HPC Carpentry curriculum for “Introduction to High-Performance Computing” while providing specific information for the CLAIX-2023 system. It is designed for prospect users of the HPC systems installed at RWTH Aachen University. Contrary to prior years, the workshop focuses on hands-on experiences on CLAIX-2023 to deepen the knowledge transfer on working with HPC systems in research.

The first part (half-day) provides an hands-on introduction to working with the UNIX shell. It follows the Software Carpentry lesson on “The Unix Shell”. No prior knowledge is required to attend.

The second part (two half-days) builds on the knowledge on working with the UNIX shell and focuses on working with HPC systems, such as CLAIX-2023. It follows the HPC Carpentry lesson “Introduction to HPC”. This part of the workshop is also targeted at prospect users of our HPC systems and will provide first experiences on how to use the software and resource management system on CLAIX-2023. It will enable participants to select preinstalled software on the cluster and write basic scripts to execute it on the HPC system. You will particularly learn about the most important details on using CLAIX-2023. Those who use to run their computing applications on local machines will learn how to run those applications on the RWTH Compute Cluster provided the necessary software licenses are in place.

The third part (half-day) will provide an introduction to the JupyterHub Service at RWTH Aachen University as an alternative method to using HPC resources at RWTH Aachen University and will conclude with an overview and introduction on how to apply for computing time at RWTH Aachen University.

Generally, this event forms the foundation needed to take part in our more in-depth event PPCES and to help take decisions on which part of PPCES might be interesting for you.

Prerequisites

• Bring a laptop with working Shell environment (Linux, MacOS, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL))
• Please provision your CLAIX-2023 account prior to the workshop following the RegApp documentation in the ITC Help Center.

All presentations will be given in English.

Cooperation Partners

Detailed Agenda and Course Materials 

Day 1 (Monday, February 9th, 2026)

Day 2 (Tuesday, February 10th, 2026)