Courses and Workshops CSCS

EuroHack20: GPU Programming Hackathon – Online

The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre is pleased to announce that the sixth GPU-programming EuroHack will be held exceptionally as an online event this year, from September 21 to September 30, 2020. Please note that the event will take place in Central European Summer Time – from 8:00 to 17:00. The new format allows us to extend the submission deadline, which is now set to Sunday, July 19, 2020.

Background

General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) potentially offer exceptionally high memory bandwidth and performance for a wide range of scientific applications. The challenge in utilizing such accelerators efficiently has been the difficulty in programming them. Today, these devices can be programmed using different programming models ranging from the low-level CUDA C/C++ programming API to the high-level directives-based programming modules, such as OpenACC or OpenMP, which offer straightforward compiler extensions to C, C++ and Fortran to address the programming hurdle. In-between these extremes, there are programming paradigms that use existing programming language feature sets to provide accelerator programming capabilities through carefully designed programming libraries, such as SYCL, Kokkos, HPX, RAJA.

Workshop Goal

EuroHack provides a unique opportunity for current or prospective users groups of large hybrid CPU-GPU systems to either (1) port their (potentially) scalable application to GPU accelerators, or (2) optimize an existing GPU-enabled application, on a state-of-the-art Tier-0 GPU system.  The goal is that the development teams leave at the end of the week with applications running on GPUs, or at least with a clear roadmap of how to get there.

Target Audience and Format

You form a team of minimum 2 developers with mission to port or optimize your application on a cluster of GPU accelerators. You cannot find time during the year due to the demands of science and teaching and are looking for a retreat to accomplish this mission in a short, but extremely intense, time window. This is a great opportunity for grad students and post-docs.

Collectively the team should know the application intimately. There will be intensive mentoring during this hands-on workshop. Our mentors come from HPC centres, universities and vendors, and besides having extensive experience in programming GPGPUs, many of them develop the GPU-capable compilers and help define the OpenACC standard. Space will be limited to 8 teams, with 2 mentors for each team.

Preliminary agenda

  • September 21, 2020 (online event 8:00 – 17:00): Prep Day (introductions and start working in teams)
  • September 22 – 25, 2020: Teams work with mentors separately through Slack or other online tools on the codes they brought to the event
  • September 28 – 30, 2020 (online 8:00 – 17:00): EuroHack

Application process

The application period is now open. The team coordinator needs to fill out the application at the OpenACC GPU Hackathons website (please make sure that you apply to the “CSCS” hackathon) and give us as much information in the form as possible by July 19, 2020 (anywhere on Earth).  Groups will be notified about acceptance or rejection of their application by August 7.

Groups whose application successfully passes the selection process will need to register for the event to confirm participation within two weeks from notification of acceptance. The notification of acceptance will include information on how to register.

Applications targeted by EuroHack

No application specifically is targeted by EuroHack; however, it should be preferably a scalable, distributed parallel one. We hope to have open-source community codes (preferably BSD or MIT licenses) in need of porting individual modules, i.e., with a well-defined subset of 2-10K lines of code with a validation test.  The latter is crucial for incremental development without introducing bugs.

Participation costs

Participation in the workshop is free of charge. Access to the supercomputers throughout the event is offered by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). Mentors and learning materials are provided by CSCS, the OpenACC organization and other partners.

Inquiries

Please contact Vasileios Karakasis (karakasis__AT__cscs.ch) or Jocksch Andreas (jocksch__AT__cscs.ch) for questions related to the EuroHack content.

 

More information available at: https://www.cscs.ch/events/upcoming-events/event-detail/eurohack20-gpu-programming-hackathon/