Spack: The Deployment Tool for ECP’s Software Stack

Todd Gamblin is a computer scientist in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). His research focuses on scalable tools for measuring, analyzing, and visualizing parallel performance data. He leads LLNL’s DevRAMP (Reproducibility, Analysis, Monitoring, and Performance) team, and he is the creator of Spack, the deployment tool for the Exascale Computing Project’s (ECP) software stack.

In high-performance computing, developers build software from source code and optimize it for the targeted computer’s architecture. Spack handles the process of downloading a tool and all the necessary dependencies—which can be tens or hundreds of other packages—and assembles those components and ensures they are properly linked and optimized for the machine.

Audio Chat Notes

Spack: a US Department of Energy lab-developed app store for supercomputers [1:24]

Spack’s role in ECP [2:26 ]

The origins and evolution of Spack [5:23]

Spack’s benefits and advantages [7:42]

The use of Spack on Mac laptops and Linux machines [10:53]

The plans for Spack [11:18]

Related Links

Spack, a Lab-developed ‘app store for supercomputers,’ becoming standard-bearer

Helping Scientists Save Time and Strengthen Software Development

Helping to Make the Development of Scientific Applications Effective and Efficient for Exascale and Beyond

Video of podcast interview

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