Skip to content

adding category for Visualization apps, and adding ParaView #234

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 4 commits into from
Aug 21, 2025
Merged

adding category for Visualization apps, and adding ParaView #234

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
4 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
c35557c
adding category for Visualization apps, and adding ParaView
jfavre Aug 21, 2025
1feb8d2
Update docs/software/sciviz/index.md
jfavre Aug 21, 2025
fc01c46
eiger has 128 cores available
jfavre Aug 21, 2025
8996154
reformat XML code in Example box
jfavre Aug 21, 2025
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions docs/software/sciviz/index.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
[](){#ref-software-scivis}
# Scientific Visualization

CSCS provides and supports a selection of scientific visualization applications on the computing systems: we usually build community codes that are adopted by several users on our systems.

CSCS staff can also help users with performance tuning and ParaView Python code to optimise their workflow in production.

* [ParaView][ref-uenv-paraview]

## Other applications

CSCS provides [tools and environments][ref-building] for installing applications that are not on the list of supported applications.

!!! under-construction
We are building guides for installing [popular applications][ref-software-installation-guides].
136 changes: 136 additions & 0 deletions docs/software/sciviz/paraview.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
[](){#ref-uenv-paraview}
# ParaView

[ParaView](https://www.paraview.org/) is an open-source, multi-platform scientific data analysis and visualization tool that enables analysis and visualization of extremely large datasets. ParaView is both a general purpose, end-user application with a distributed architecture that can be seamlessly leveraged by your desktop or other remote parallel computing resources and an extensible framework with a collection of tools and libraries for various applications including scripting (using Python), web visualization (through trame and ParaViewWeb), or in situ analysis (with Catalyst).

!!! note "uenvs"

[ParaView](https://www.paraview.org/) is provided on [ALPS][platforms-on-alps] via [uenv][ref-uenv].
Please have a look at the [uenv documentation][ref-uenv] for more information about uenvs and how to use them.


## Running ParaView in batch mode with Python scripts

The following sbatch script can be used as a template.

=== "GH200"

```bash
#SBATCH -N 1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=4
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=72
#SBATCH --gpus-per-task=1
#SBATCH -A <account>
#SBATCH --uenv=paraview/5.13.2:v2 --view=paraview
#SBATCH --hint=nomultithread

export MPICH_GPU_SUPPORT_ENABLED=0

srun --cpus-per-task=72 --cpu_bind=sockets /user-environment/ParaView-5.13/gpu_wrapper.sh /user-environment/ParaView-5.13/bin/pvbatch ParaViewPythonScript.py
```
Current observation is that best performance is achieved using [one MPI rank per GPU][ref-slurm-gh200-single-rank-per-gpu]. How to run multiple ranks per GPU is described [here][ref-slurm-gh200-multi-rank-per-gpu].

=== "Eiger"

```bash
#SBATCH -N 1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=128
#SBATCH -A <account>
#SBATCH --uenv=paraview/5.13.2:v2 --view=paraview
#SBATCH --hint=nomultithread

srun --cpus-per-task=128 /user-environment/ParaView-5.13/bin/pvbatch ParaViewPythonScript.py
```


## Using ParaView in client-server mode

A ParaView server can connect to a remote ParaView client installed on your desktop. Make sure to use the same version on both sides. Your local ParaView GUI client needs to create a SLURM job with appropriate parameters. We recommend that you make a copy of the file `/user-environment/ParaView-5.13/rc-submit-pvserver.sh` to your $HOME, such that you can further fine-tune it.

You will need to add the corresponding XML code to your local ParaView installation, such that the Connect menu entry recognizes the ALPS cluster. The following code would be added to your **local** `$HOME/.config/ParaView/servers.pvsc` file

!!! Example "XML code to add to your local ParaView settings"
```xml
<Servers>
<Server name="Reverse-Connect-Daint.Alps" configuration="" resource="csrc://:11111" timeout="-1">
<CommandStartup>
<Options>
<Option name="MACHINE" label="remote cluster" save="true">
<String default="daint"/>
</Option>
<Option name="SSH_USER" label="SSH Username" save="true">
<String default="your-userid"/>
</Option>
<Option name="ACCOUNT" label="Account to be charged" save="true">
<String default="your-projectid"/>
</Option>
<Option name="RESERVATION" label="reservation name" save="true">
<Enumeration default="none">
<Entry value="" label="none"/>
</Enumeration>
</Option>
<Option name="SSH_CMD" label="SSH command" save="true">
<File default="/usr/bin/ssh"/>
</Option>
<Option name="REMOTESCRIPT" label="The remote script which generates the SLURM job" save="true">
<String default="/users/your-userid/rc-submit-pvserver.sh"/>
</Option>
<Option name="PVNodes" label="Number of cluster nodes" save="true">
<Range type="int" min="1" max="128" step="1" default="1"/>
</Option>
<Option name="PVTasks" label="Number of pvserver per node" save="true">
<Range type="int" min="1" max="4" step="1" default="4"/>
</Option>
<Option name="Queue" label="Queue" save="true">
<Enumeration default="normal">
<Entry value="normal" label="normal"/>
<Entry value="debug" label="debug"/>
</Enumeration>
</Option>
<Option name="MemxNode" label="MemxNode" save="true">
<Enumeration default="standard">
<Entry value="high" label="high"/>
<Entry value="standard" label="standard"/>
</Enumeration>
</Option>
<Option name="VERSION" label="VERSION ?" save="true">
<Enumeration default="5.13.2:v2">
<Entry value="5.13.2:v2" label="5.13.2:v2"/>
</Enumeration>
</Option>
<Option name="PV_SERVER_PORT" label="pvserver port" save="true">
<Range type="int" min="1024" max="65535" step="1" default="1100"/>
</Option>
<Option name="NUMMIN" label="job wall time" save="true">
<String default="00:29:59"/>
</Option>
<Option name="SESSIONID" label="Session id" save="true">
<String default="ParaViewServer"/>
</Option>
</Options>
<Command exec="$SSH_CMD$" delay="5" process_wait="0">
<Arguments>
<Argument value="-A"/>
<Argument value="-l"/>
<Argument value="$SSH_USER$"/>
<Argument value="-R"/>
<Argument value="$PV_SERVER_PORT$:localhost:$PV_SERVER_PORT$"/>
<Argument value="$MACHINE$"/>
<Argument value="$REMOTESCRIPT$"/>
<Argument value="$SESSIONID$"/>
<Argument value="$NUMMIN$"/>
<Argument value="$PVNodes$"/>
<Argument value="$PVTasks$"/>
<Argument value="$PV_SERVER_PORT$"/>
<Argument value="$MACHINE$"/>
<Argument value="$VERSION$"/>
<Argument value="$Queue$"/>
<Argument value="$MemxNode$"/>
<Argument value="$ACCOUNT$"/>
<Argument value="$RESERVATION$;"/>
<Argument value="sleep"/>
<Argument value="6000"/>
</Arguments>
</Command>
</Servers>
```
3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions mkdocs.yml
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -96,6 +96,9 @@ nav:
- 'Resource and hooks': software/container-engine/resource-hook.md
- 'EDF reference': software/container-engine/edf.md
- 'Known issues': software/container-engine/known-issue.md
- 'Scientific Visualization':
- software/sciviz/index.md
- 'ParaView': software/sciviz/paraview.md
- 'Unsupported Software':
- software/unsupported/index.md
- 'Matlab': build-install/applications/matlab.md
Expand Down