Lessons Learnt from Delivering Training for Isambard-AI 

The Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS) operates Isambard-AI, the UK’s fastest supercomputer and part of the national AI Research Resource (AIRR). Supporting a user base of thousands of researchers across academia, government, and industry, BriCS has developed a training programme to help users of all experience levels access and exploit their systems effectively. BriCS delivers workshops for AI professionals, ranging from short introductory sessions to full-day events, covering a modular set of tutorials spanning chatbot creation, distributed training and inference, installing and running software, and domain-specific applications such as AlphaFold-based protein structure prediction.

This presentation shares practical lessons from running these workshops, including the organisational effort behind each session, common pitfalls such as access issues and varying attendee ability, and the importance of contingency planning. We will also discuss BriCS’s plans to expand training provision further, including greater engagement with government and SME users. 

Speakers

Dr Anna Price, AI Supercomputing Infrastructure Specialist, Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS), University of Bristol

Dr Richard Lane, AI Supercomputing Infrastructure Engineer, Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS), University of Bristol