{"id":146,"date":"2023-10-02T15:09:11","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T15:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/?p=146"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:41:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T14:41:20","slug":"sscc-news-october-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/2023\/10\/02\/sscc-news-october-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"SSCC News October 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"#ssccwelcome\">Welcome to the SSCC<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We want to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of the Social Science Computing Cooperative, whether you\u2019re a new faculty member, staff member, or graduate student who will use our resources for research, or an undergraduate taking a class that uses SSCC resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is the SSCC?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The SSCC provides servers, software, training, and consulting to support researchers (and future researchers) who do statistical analysis. If you didn\u2019t attend an orientation session, feel free to email the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sscc.wisc.edu\/get-help\/\">SSCC Help Desk<\/a>, tell us about yourself, and ask what we can do for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is SSCC News?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SSCC News is one of our main ways of getting information to our members. It comes out about once every two months. Please look over the email when you get it and then read the articles that will affect you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you\u2019d rather not receive SSCC News, email <a href=\"mailto:helpdesk@ssc.wisc.edu\">helpdesk@ssc.wisc.edu<\/a> and they can take care of that for you. If you\u2019re no longer interested in SSCC News because you no longer use your SSCC account, they can close it for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"#oct23training\">October SSCC Training<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In October, SSCC\u2019s training moves beyond the basics. R topics include <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2840\">data visualization<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2842\">categorical variables<\/a>, while Stata topics include <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2844\">loops and macros<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2845\">text data<\/a>, and a special short session on <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2846\">new features in Stata 18<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still need to learn the basics of R, Stata, or Python? The schedule hasn\u2019t been set yet, but we\u2019ll teach them again in January, between semesters, and online so it\u2019s okay if you\u2019re not back in Madison yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"#slurmupdate23\">Slurm Update<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Slurm usage has increased significantly in the last two months, to the point that sometimes (not very often) jobs have to wait in the queue for a server to open up before they can start. This is normal and expected: Slurm is designed to maximize the amount of work it gets done, not to finish jobs as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve created a new web app to help you identify what resources are currently available: visit <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/slurm_status\">https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/slurm_status<\/a>. We have also tweaked Slurm\u2019s priority calculations to put more weight on recent usage. When someone has a large number of jobs running this will give other users a higher priority, so their jobs will be next up when a server becomes available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some tips for getting your job to run sooner and making the whole cluster more efficient:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Only reserve as much memory as you know you need. Memory, not cores, is almost always the bottleneck that restricts the number of jobs Slurm can run. Don\u2019t reserve more than 250GB of memory unless you absolutely have to, or your job will need one of the high-memory servers.<\/li>\n<li>Use more cores! We don\u2019t think it has sunk in for many people that most of the Slurm servers have <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em><strong>128<\/strong><\/em><\/span> cores. It\u2019s especially painful to see jobs reserving 1000GB of memory and just 16 cores, leaving 112 cores idle. If you\u2019re using a lot of memory and your job can benefit from more than one core, use lots of cores (probably all of them) so you make that memory available to others as quickly as possible. <span class=\"ui-provider bwh bwi bwj bwk bwl bwm bwn bwo bwp bwq bwr bws bwt bwu bwv bww bwx bwy bwz bxa bxb bxc bxd bxe bxf bxg bxh bxi bxj bxk bxl bxm bxn bxo bxp\" dir=\"ltr\">Our <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc\/pubs\/grc\/programs.html\">Guide to Research Computing at the SSCC<\/a> contains information on what programs are able to utilize multiple cores.<i><strong><br><\/strong><\/i><\/span>\n<\/li>\n<li>Use the <strong>short<\/strong> partition. Those servers are reserved for jobs that take less than 6 hours.<\/li>\n<li>If Slurm is full and you need some computing power <em>right now<\/em>, use Linstat. When Slurm gets busy jobs have to wait. When Linstat gets busy it slows down, but you can always get <em>some<\/em> CPU time although your job may run slowly using shared resources!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the other hand, most of the time there is a significant amount of computing power in the Slurm cluster just waiting for you to put it to work. We\u2019re still encouraging all our researchers to think bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"#23summertechupdate\">Summer Tech Update<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some highlights from the recently completed summer tech update include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Stata was upgraded to Stata 18\u2013come to <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc_jsp\/training\/details.jsp?class_id=2846\">our training<\/a> to learn about the new features.<\/li>\n<li data-pm-slice='1 1 [\"list\",{},\"list_item\",{\"indent\":1,\"type\":\"bulleted\"}]'>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/quarto.org\/\">Quarto<\/a> is now available on Linstat (two examples of what can be done in Quarto: <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc\/pubs\/grc\/\">Guide to Research Computing at the SSCC<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/sscc.wisc.edu\/sscc\/pubs\/stata_dates\/stata_dates.html\">Working with Dates and Times in Stata)<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li data-pm-slice='1 1 [\"list\",{},\"list_item\",{\"indent\":1,\"type\":\"bulleted\"}]'>Gittyup replaced GitAhead<\/li>\n<li data-pm-slice='1 1 [\"list\",{},\"list_item\",{\"indent\":1,\"type\":\"bulleted\"}]'>Edge has replaced Chrome as the primary browser on Winstat. Firefox is also available on Winstat as another browser option.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coming soon: a \u201cdesktop\u201d graphical user interface for Linstat powered by <a href=\"https:\/\/openondemand.org\/\">Open OnDemand<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the SSCC We want to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of the Social Science Computing Cooperative, whether you\u2019re a new faculty member, staff member, or graduate student who will use our resources for research, or an undergraduate taking a class that uses SSCC resources. What is the SSCC? The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uw_seo_meta_title":"","_uw_seo_meta_description":"","_uw_seo_twitter_card_type":"summary_large_image","_uw_seo_meta_image":"","_uw_seo_meta_image_url":"","_uw_seo_meta_image_sizes":[],"_uw_seo_custom_meta_tags":[],"uw_external_link":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sscc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www-devel.ssc.wisc.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}