As part of the National AI Research Programme (PNRIA)*, CNRS Computer Science has the mission to build a network of engineers around the Jean Zay ecosystem and the user support missions of IDRIS.

To this end, a team of 9 PNRIA engineers is based at IDRIS, within the AI User Support team to be close to the Jean Zay supercomputer and the teams responsible for its operation. In parallel, smaller teams of 3 people are also established at GRICAD (Grenoble), IRISA (Rennes), IRIT (Toulouse) and LORIA (Nancy).

The PNRIA Deep Learning expert engineers have the mission to support the French academic community in adopting AI technologies to advance their research projects.

This service is intended for researchers from all scientific fields (environment, astrophysics, materials physics, fluid mechanics, chemistry, biology, health, humanities and social sciences, computer science, etc.).

Whether you are discovering the possibilities of applying Deep Learning in your research field, or you are already experienced in training deep neural networks, whether you want to exploit large databases or optimise the performance of your training algorithm, you can benefit from enhanced support for your project by the AI engineers of the programme for a period of up to six months.

* The PNRIA is a programme led by CNRS Computer Science on behalf of the CNRS. It is funded under the France 2030 plan and operated by the French National Research Agency (ANR).

• NEW IDRIS website
• Next IDRIS UC meeting: Tuesday 31 March 2026
• idr_module_search command
• Reminder on the proper use of Jean Zay file systems
• Misuse of squeue
• IDRIS Training

• NEW IDRIS website

Following a long collaborative effort, IDRIS has redesigned its website. The address http://www.idris.fr will remain unchanged. Therefore, do not be surprised when this new site becomes accessible (normally by the end of the month).

• Next IDRIS UC meeting: Tuesday 31 March 2026

The next meeting of the IDRIS User Committee (UC) will take place on Tuesday 31 March 2026 at the IDRIS premises. Do not hesitate to send your requests to the address cu-elus at idris.fr before Tuesday 24 March 2026. More information: http://www.idris.fr/cu.html

• idr_module_search command

For those who use the conda environments provided by IDRIS, a new command "idr_module_search" has been developed to help you find the most suitable Jean Zay module for your needs. It allows you to identify which environments contain certain packages, with or without version specification. For more information: http://www.idris.fr/jean-zay/gpu/jean-zay-gpu-logiciels-ia.html#%F0%9F%94%8D_commande_idr_module_search

• Reminder on the proper use of Jean Zay file systems

We remind you that it is recommended not to exceed a few tens of thousands of elements (files and subdirectories) per directory to ensure the proper functioning of Jean Zay's file systems. If you have a very large number of files to store, adjust the depth of your directory trees accordingly. Following this rule will also ensure the best possible performance, as metadata can be efficiently distributed among the different storage servers.

• Misuse of squeue

We remind you that misuse of the "squeue" command can contribute to overloading the Slurm job manager. We invite you to limit the number of calls to "squeue" to a maximum of one or two per minute if you use a script to monitor the status of your jobs. Since Slurm's internal refresh rate is of the same order of magnitude, there is no point in making more frequent requests.

• IDRIS Training

Remember to register now for the IDRIS training sessions scheduled until next summer:

• Modern Scientific C++, from 01/06/2026 to 03/06/2026
• Hybrid MPI/OpenMP Programming, from 04/06/2026 to 05/06/2026
• Jean Zay Workshop, from 11/06/2026 to 12/06/2026
• OpenMP / MPI, from 15/06/2026 to 19/06/2026.

For more information on the IDRIS training catalogue and registration procedures: http://www.idris.fr/formations/catalogue.html.

The Deep Learning for Science Day is back!

Registration and information at https://jdls2026.sciencesconf.org/

IDRIS and the CNRS Fidle National Training Action are organising the fourth edition of the Deep Learning for Science Day (JDLS).

This event will take place on Monday 8 June from 9 am to 5 pm at

This event is open to everyone, free of charge, by registration only.
You do not need to register if you plan to attend the event remotely.

The content of the day will also be broadcast live on the FIDLE YouTube channel for those who cannot travel: https://www.youtube.com/@CNRS-FIDLE.

What is the Deep Learning for Science Day (JDLS)?

The Deep Learning for Science Day (JDLS), organised by IDRIS and the FIDLE training programme, is a national event dedicated to the use of deep learning and artificial intelligence in scientific research.

Open to all (researchers, engineers, PhD students, post-docs), the JDLS offers a series of high-level presentations. Around ten experts present cutting-edge work in Deep Learning applied to various fields such as physics, astrophysics, biology, chemistry, law, humanities and social sciences, etc.

⚠️ Please note that the presentations will be in French. ⚠️

Designed as a place for interdisciplinary exchange and meetings, the JDLS aims to bring scientific communities together around concrete solutions to advance research through deep learning. A significant place is also given to PhD students, who can present their work during dedicated flash presentations and poster sessions.

IDRIS is hiring! Do not hesitate to consult the page on the CNRS Employment Portal.

For the sixth consecutive year, IDRIS is organising, in conjunction with NVIDIA, a GPU HPC and AI Hackathon.

It will take place on May 12th (remotely) and from May 19th to 21st 2026 (at the IDRIS premises). The registration deadline is set for March 10th.

GPU Hackathons allow teams of three or four developers or researchers to improve the performance of their HPC or AI codes under the guidance of one or more mentors, who are experts in GPU programming and come from universities, national laboratories, computing centres, governmental institutions, and manufacturers.

It is not necessary to be a user of IDRIS to participate in this event, so feel free to share this message with your colleagues. You will have the opportunity to access IDRIS's computing resources to test your code on recent GPUs, including NVIDIA H100s on Jean Zay and NVIDIA GB200 NVL72s on the DALIA prototype machine.

For HPC projects, it could be a matter of starting to port a code to GPU using OpenACC, OpenMP, Kokkos, GPU libraries, CUDA, etc., or optimising an existing GPU implementation. For large codebases, it is recommended to prepare a representative mini-application to be more efficient during the event.

For AI projects, this Hackathon offers a unique opportunity to explore fine-tuning, developing, or evaluating state-of-the-art models such as LLMs and GenAI applications. You can optimise your models using advanced techniques such as mixed precision, multi-GPU or multi-node parallelisation (DDP, PP, TP, CP), using basic frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, or specialised tools such as DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM, Nanotron, or NVIDIA NeMo. Although full pre-training is out of reach within the Hackathon's timeframe, preparing a pre-training code for large-scale models is still possible.

Registration is done via the event page (in English): https://www.openhackathons.org/s/siteevent/a0CUP00003Ahxc22AB/se000449.

Hello,

During yesterday's maintenance (February 17th, 2026), the operating system of the Jean Zay supercomputer has been updated to Red Hat 9.6 (from 9.4 previously). This update aims at keeping a recent software environment available on Jean Zay.

This operating system version change should have a limited impact on your use of the machine. The majority of your executables should continue to work without any action on your part, however in case of issues we recommend that you try to recompile your codes.

The GNU compilers bundled with the operating system have been updated to version 11.5.0. The "gcc/11.4.1" module is now an alias for a new "gcc/11.5.0" module in order to ensure an easy transition.

In case of problems, contact the IDRIS support.

Best regards, The IDRIS user support team

12 March 2026 - 2pm - Online

Webinar Jean Zay Grand Challenges 4: The LLM Revolution

IDRIS is organizing an online HPC and AI GPU profiling Bootcamp on February 10th, together with NVIDIA and the OpenACC organization.

This bootcamp provides an overview of profiling and code optimization on GPU through a mix of lectures and hands-on sessions which will in particular allow you to familiarize yourself with the NVIDIA profiling tools Nsight Systems and Nsight Compute. There will be two parallel hands-on sessions, one focusing on optimizing high performance computing codes and the other on optimizing artificial intelligence codes.

The hands-on sessions will take place on computing resources provided by NVIDIA. You can attend the bootcamp even if you do not have an IDRIS account.

The bootcamp will also be the occasion to discover the new NVIDIA Grace Blackwell NVL72 architecture which powers the prototype machine DALIA recently installed at IDRIS.

Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss their real-world projects and codes with NVIDIA experts at the end of the event.

Attending this bootcamp is highly recommended for those interested in the GPU hackathon [http://www.idris.fr/eng/annonces/idris-gpu-hackathon-2026-eng.html] which will be held at IDRIS in May.

Please register on https://www.openhackathons.org/s/siteevent/a0CUP00003MjHIf2AN/se000457 (registration deadline: January 27th).

Summary:​

• Exceptional closures of the IDRIS helpdesk on 24, 26 and 29 December 2025
• Next IDRIS UC meeting: Thursday 18 December 2025
• IDRIS Training

• Exceptional closures of the IDRIS helpdesk on 24, 26 and 29 December 2025

The IDRIS helpdesk will be exceptionally closed on Wednesday 24 December, Friday 26 December and Monday 29 December 2025. Requests sent to assist at idris.fr will only be processed from Tuesday 30 December. The administrative management service for users remains open on these dates, so you can contact gestutil at idris.fr for any request related to the management of your computing account (password reset, addition of a connection IP address, etc.).

• Next IDRIS UC meeting: Thursday 18 December 2025

The next meeting of the IDRIS User Committee (UC) will take place on Thursday 18 December 2025 at the IDRIS premises. Do not hesitate to send your requests to the address cu-elus at idris.fr before Friday 12 December 2025. More information: http://www.idris.fr/cu.html

• IDRIS Training

Remember to register now for the IDRIS training sessions scheduled until next summer:

• Practical Introduction to Deep Learning, from 02/02/2026 to 03/02/2026
• Deep Learning Architectures, from 04/02/2026 to 05/02/2026
• Deep Learning Launch Workshop, on 06/02/2026
• Optimised Deep Learning on Jean Zay, from 03/03/2026 to 06/03/2026
• MPI, from 17/03/2026 to 20/03/2026
• OpenMP, from 25/03/2026 to 27/03/2026
• Modern Scientific C++, from 01/06/2026 to 03/06/2026
• Hybrid MPI/OpenMP Programming, from 04/06/2026 to 05/06/2026
• Jean Zay Workshop, from 11/06/2026 to 12/06/2026
• OpenMP / MPI, from 15/06/2026 to 19/06/2026.

For more information on the IDRIS training catalogue and registration procedures: http://www.idris.fr/formations/catalogue.html.

Summary:​

• CC-FR Webinar to Discover MINERVA: 4 December 2025 at 2 PM

• IDRIS Training

• CC-FR Webinar to Discover MINERVA: 4 December 2025 at 2 PM

On Thursday 4 December 2025 at 2 PM, the French Competence Centre (CC-FR) invites you to a webinar open to all to discover MINERVA, the European centre for services dedicated to large-scale AI on supercomputers. Mathieu Lobet (CEA / Maison de la Simulation) will present how MINERVA supports researchers, engineers and companies in bringing their AI workflows to HPC infrastructures, optimising their models at scale and leveraging EuroHPC resources for their AI projects. Come and discover how to benefit from MINERVA support and discuss your AI and HPC needs! All information and the registration procedure are available here: https://cc-fr.eu/%C3%A9v%C3%A8nement/accelerez-vos-projets-dia-a-grande-echelle-avec-minerva-le-centre-europeen-dedie-a-lia-sur-supercalculateurs/.

• IDRIS Training

The following IDRIS training sessions are confirmed and will take place before the end of the year:

• SIMD Vectorisation, 19/11/2025
• HPC Debugging, 20/11/2025
• Introduction to OpenACC and OpenMP GPU, from 26/11/2025 to 28/11/2025
• PETSc, from 04/12/2025 to 05/12/2025

For more information on the IDRIS training catalogue and registration procedures: http://www.idris.fr/formations/catalogue.html.