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Our mission is to empower the UK's scientific community with the knowledge and skills required to harness high-performance computing for world leading research. We support users of the DiRAC national facilities serving the communities of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Solar System, Planetary Science, and Nuclear Physics Theory, but all courses are free and accessible to all researchers.

Through our online courses, we aim to make advanced computational training accessible, practical, and relevant to today's research challenges. We invite you to explore the courses below, start your learning journey, develop the HPC expertise that will help drive your career, and help develop tomorrow's discoveries.

Foundation HPC Skills

Navigating and Working in HPC Environments

Develop the essential skills needed to work effectively in computational research environments through this course. Navigating and Working in HPC Environments provides a practical introduction to Bash, equipping you with the essential skills to interact with and manage Linux-based systems effectively.

Foundation HPC Skills

Managing Code and Collaborating Effectively

Dive into Git, the industry-standard version control system, and learn how to manage your code and collaborate effectively as part of a team. Managing Code and Collaborating Effectively provides a practical introduction to Git, equipping you with the essential skills to organise, track, and safeguard your code while collaborating seamlessly within teams.

Foundation HPC Skills

Building Robust and Maintainable Code

Master the core principles of Software Engineering and gain the skills to write clear, efficient, and maintainable code for HPC applications through this course. Building Robust and Maintainable Code provides a practical introduction to Software Engineering, developing your understanding of good programming practices and preparing you to build reliable software for research and technical applications.

Foundation HPC Skills

Ensuring Quality and Reliability in Code

Understand the importance of good documentation, code review processes, and testing practices, and their impact on the long-term viability of HPC code. Ensuring Quality and Reliability in Code provides a practical introduction to software testing, documentation, and code review, equipping you with the essential skills to produce reliable and maintainable software.

Foundation HPC Skills

Developing Efficient Parallel Code

Explore the challenges of scalability and learn how to address them to develop efficient parallel code for HPC environments. Developing Efficient Parallel Code provides a practical introduction to key concepts to successful HPC applications, such as scalability and parallel computing, helping you navigate scaling issues and troubleshoot them to build efficient parallel code.

HPC Developer

Running Jobs on HPC Systems

Discover how to use SLURM, the workload manager that schedules jobs, allocates computing resources, and ensures they are shared fairly and efficiently across DiRAC and other HPC facilities. Running Jobs on HPC Systems is designed for researchers who are new to HPC or looking to build confidence using shared computing resources. You'll learn the practical skills needed to submit, monitor, and manage jobs with SLURM, helping you run your research more effectively on HPC systems.

HPC Developer

High-Performance Computing Concepts

Developed by Durham University as part of the HAI-End project, HPC Concepts is designed to help participants quickly revisit essential terminology and foundational concepts, and to support workshops and practical sessions on performance analysis in High-Performance Computing (HPC). Its flexible design allows you to build your own personalised learning pathway by choosing any topic of interest to begin your learning journey. Based on your selection, the knowledge graph will recommend prerequisite sessions to review, as well as subsequent sessions to support your continued progression.

HPC Developer

Directive Programming for HPC

Gain practical experience with modern parallel programming techniques and learn the core principles of parallel programming, including how to combine OpenMP and MPI to create hybrid parallel applications with this course. Directive Programming for HPC will help you develop practical skills to identify and parallelise sections of code, enabling multiple threads to execute concurrently within a shared-memory model and optimising the use of computational resources.

HPC Developer

Programming for Distributed Systems

Find out how to develop parallel applications for distributed-memory High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. Programming for Distributed Systems will help you understand the concepts of message-passing parallelism, including how to develop, run, and optimise MPI-based applications.

GPU Developer

1st Step in GPU Programming

There is no single best way to port code to GPUs. Examine the various approaches described in this course to determine which is the best match for your research team’s goals, expertise, existing codebase, and long-term maintenance needs. Developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and UCL, 1st Step in GPU Programming provides a practical introduction to GPU programming for High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. By combining Jupyter notebooks, worked examples, and self-assessment activities, the course will help build your confidence through reinforced learning and hands-on practical experience.

GPU Developer

MI300 Architecture

Gain a solid understanding of the AMD MI300 GPU architecture and the programming models available for AMD GPUs and APUs. MI300 Architecture is ideal for researchers and developers looking to accelerate existing applications using a practical and accessible approach to GPU programming within HPC environments.

GPU Developer

Directive-Based Programming for GPUs

Harness the power of GPU acceleration through a directive-based programming approach to offload your CPU workloads onto GPUs using a practical and accessible approach to GPU programming within High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. Directive-Based Programming for GPUs will teach you how to offload computationally intensive workloads to GPUs using OpenMP. Through carefully designed content and hands-on practical exercises, you'll learn how to improve application performance while minimising the complexity traditionally associated with GPU programming.

GPU Developer

Language-Extension Programming for GPUs

Explore the concepts and techniques required to develop efficient GPU software using a language-extension approach with Language-Extension Programming for GPUs. Designed for researchers and developers looking to move beyond directive-based programming approaches and gain deeper control over GPU performance and optimisation on AMD hardware, this course builds on the introductory GPU programming course and provides a practical introduction to HIP for AMD GPU architectures.

AI/ML Developer

MACE

Sail into Machine Learning Approach to Chemistry Emulation (MACE) and discover how a team of researchers developed an architecture trained as a surrogate model for Astrochemistry, capable of reproducing the evolution of chemical abundances in just 5% of the time required by its classical analogue counterpart. This course will inspire you to embark on the challenging journey of applying AI and ML techniques to your research, helping you enhance and streamline your workflows.

DiRAC Presents

Performance Analysis Workshop Series 2024

Presented by our academic partner, Durham University in 2024, this workshop series offers a comprehensive introduction to a selection of open source tools which enable researchers to assess the performance behaviour of their code. Performance Analysis Workshop Series is suitable to researchers and research software engineers who want to better understand how well and why codes use the machinery as they do.

DiRAC Presents

Debugging, Testing & Correctness Workshop - Durham 2023

Delivered in collaboration with Durham University, this workshop displays novel debugging tools for finding bugs and delivering correct(er) code within modern HPC environment. Debugging, Testing and Correctness Workshop Series is suitable to all users and particularly developers who want to acquire new skills in finding bugs and delivering correct code.

DiRAC Presents

Optimising Applications for AMD MI300 GPUs

Hosted in partnership with AMD, this Introductory Training bring to you the latest innovations on AMD GPUs. Optimising Applications for AMD MI300 GPUs - AMD MI300 2025 is suitable to all users and will help you gain knowledge and skills on GPUs with an AMD architecture.

DiRAC Presents

Introduction to Intel oneAPI and SYCL for GPU Programming

Through this lecture-based virtual course, Intel and Coldplay experts present a core set of tools and libraries for developing high-performance, data-centric applications across diverse GPU architectures in this Introductory Training, This course is focused on the Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit and will help you in your journey to refactor CPU based codes onto GPU architectures.