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June 6, 2015

Today a group of 8th grade students and their parents from the Bosque School, an independent, co-educational college preparatory school, participated in a workshop at the Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC). This one-day workshop, led by CARC Applications Scientist Dr. Ryan Johnson, introduced the 8th graders to the basic structure of computers, basic command-line Linux, Python programming, and high performance parallel computing. Students were granted temporary access to the Galles Beowolf cluster via PCs hosted in the Center's workshop room. The terminal-based Ubuntu Linux environment and the scientific Python stack on this supercomputer cluster allowed the students to experience a guided, hands-on lesson along the lines of the CARC introduction to parallel computing and software carpentry workshops that the Center hosts twice a month for University of New Mexico faculty, staff and student researchers. The workshop concluded with a tour of CARC's machine rooms, and hands-on experience disassembling and reassembling a spare node from the Ulam supercomputer.

"Fueled by apples, salami, cheese and crackers, and coffee for the parents, everyone had an amazing time. As the students were leaving, I overheard them asking their parents if they could erase their home PC operating systems and install Linux and Python instead," says Dr. Johnson.