I saw a post in the Data domain saying it was hard to get resources to learn MPI programming. First off I am not promoting the company I work for (Dell). I like to connect people and to inspire people with possibilities they did not know about.
Every HPC vendor has benchmarking clusters and equipment available for tests and Proof of Concept.
We have Customer Solutions Centres where you can test drive the latest CPU and GPU systems. We have HPC Centres of Excellence who can show you best practices and help you get started. We also have big Top 500 class benchmarking clusters in Austin, Texas.
Intel and AMD have their own in-house benchmarking clusters.
Making it clear though you cannot just present yourself to an HPC vendor and say “heyyy- i want to run some code”. What we need is a realistic opportunity - yes you would have to engage with a presales person and give a reasonable expectation that you might be buying something in the future or are organising an RFP for new kit.
If you do this then any HPC vendor will be pleased to help you use their benchmarking facilities.