Community Event Hits Upon Software Development for Next-Gen GPU Architectures

By Scott Gibson

A unique chance for the high-performance computing community to learn about the first pieces of software and performance-analysis tools that are portable across more than one type of GPU architecture and developed for the nation’s first exascale supercomputers is coming up May 10–12. The event is the 2022 Community Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Days, led by approximately 80 to 100 staff members from the US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) via Zoom sessions.

“This is the opportunity to see what’s available, and even if we’re still in the midst of producing this software, hardening it, delivering, and deploying it, it’s not too long from now that these capabilities will be available,” said Mike Heroux, director of ECP Software Technology. “The software is open source and will be generally usable by anyone who wants to do high-performance computing on the next generation of GPU architectures.”

Twenty-one BOFs will be offered and provide discussions not only around GPUs but also, I/O and storage systems and LLVM, the community compiler ecosystem. Additionally, a few of the sessions will examine improving productivity and focus on the human element of the software enterprise.

Some of the BOFs will have the characteristics of a tutorial and consist of a series of talks by people who are developing software tools, but the essence of the sessions will be to provide a question-and-answer forum for discussion.

“So, this is community members learning about what ECP teams are working on, asking questions, and even making suggestions as to what should be worked on,” Heroux said. “If you have some expertise or insight into what kinds of tools and libraries would be useful to you, there’s a good chance that someone else would also find those useful. And so, it’s your opportunity to provide input to development activities.”

The BOFs, all conducted through Zoom, are open to anyone, but registration is required. The sessions will generally run 60 minutes to 90 minutes. To see the agenda and register for individual sessions, visit the 2022 ECP Community BOF Days events page.