High Performance Computing & AI
Practical notes on Python, JupyterHub, Kubernetes and AI for science — from the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
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How to use AI chat assistants while traveling
Traveling often means unreliable or expensive internet access, especially on airplanes or in remote areas. Here are two practical ways to keep using AI chat assistants even when your connectivity is limited:
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Voyager enters ACCESS allocations phase
As of June 1, 2025, SDSC's Voyager supercomputer has transitioned from its testbed phase to the ACCESS Allocations Phase. All research use now requires an official ACCESS allocation.
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How to use GitHub Copilot for scientific computing
GitHub Copilot is rapidly transforming the landscape of scientific computing by streamlining code development and accelerating research workflows. This guide outlines how computational scientists can leverage Copilot, with a focus on professional and research-oriented use cases.
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Python and AI coding summer camp in person in San Diego
I'm excited to announce that I'll be teaching a brand new Python and AI Coding Summer Camp in person in San Diego, hosted at the Italian School of San Diego (Kearny Mesa)!
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VS Code Copilot agent mode: A productivity showcase
Visual Studio Code, together with GitHub Copilot in agent mode, enables a more focused and efficient development workflow. Below are three practical examples of how this integration can help streamline your daily work, each illustrated with real screenshots:
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Astrophysics Papers Daily Summaries Notebook with the Jetstream LLM Inference Service
Fetch today's astro-ph papers from arXiv, summarize abstracts with llm, and output a Markdown summary. This is an example of using the Jetstream Inference Service, notice that you need first to configure the llm package to access the Jetstream Inference Service via the API
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BK18 added to Panexp model suite and new WebSky radio source models in PySM 3.4.1
Following up on my previous post about Panexp model suite simulations, there have been several important updates: BK18 Simulation Now Available
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Deploy a NFS server to share data between JupyterHub users on Jetstream
This is an updated version of my 2023 tutorial on deploying a NFS server to share data between JupyterHub users on Jetstream.
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How to request High Performance Computing (HPC) resources
I am often asked how a scientist located in the US can access supercomputing resources. I decided to write a blog post with an overview of the options, consider that I'm writing this in April 2025, so please cross-check on the official websites.
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PySM 3.4.1 Released
PySM version 3.4.1 is now available. It can be downloaded from PyPI. The release notes detail new features and improvements.
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healpy 1.18.1 released
Just released healpy 1.18.1, this version includes important bug fixes, please test and open issues at Major improvements in this release:
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New simulations of the Panexp model suite for Planck and WMAP
Following up on my recent post about PySM models for Galactic emission, I have recently executed three new simulations of the Panexp model suite:
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Deployment of BinderHub by Project Pythia on Jetstream 2
Project Pythia has recently published a blog post about their deployment of BinderHub on Jetstream 2. This blog post discusses Project Pythia's efforts to address "Jupyter notebook obsolescence" by creating reproducible computational environments for geoscience education and workflows.
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Jetstream2 Usage Monitoring
Monitoring resource usage on cloud platforms is essential for managing allocations effectively. For users of Jetstream2, the Unidata team has developed a useful script to track Service Unit (SU) consumption over time.
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Gateways 2024 - Tutorial on creating a serverless research data repository based on Globus
Following our work published at PEARC 2024 presenting a Data Portal based on a static website built on top of Globus HTTPS services, we presented a tutorial at Gateways 2024.