The High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF), a charity that promotes innovation via open source, has been established, according to the Linux Foundation. Through boosting acceptance, decreasing barriers to contribution, and assisting with development efforts, this new endeavor seeks to construct, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high-performance computing (HPC).
Data centers are implementing more GPUs and other compute accelerators as HPC becomes more essential for scientific computing, digital engineering, and AI applications. To facilitate cooperation between business, academia, and government organizations on the scientific software stack, HPSF will provide an impartial platform for key initiatives in the HPC ecosystem.
Strong support for the foundation is shown across the HPC industry, with Premier Members Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) among them. ANL, AMD, Intel, Kitware, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), NVIDIA, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are examples of General Members. The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the University of Oregon, and the University of Maryland are among the Associate Members.
“The HPC community has a long history of innovation being driven by open source projects,” said Ian Colle, General Manager, Advanced Computing and Simulation at AWS. “AWS is thrilled to join the High Performance Software Foundation to build on this work. In particular, AWS has been deeply involved in contributing upstream to Spack, and we’re looking forward to working with the HPSF to sustain and accelerate the growth of key HPC projects so everyone can benefit.”
“Open collaboration is essential to HPC innovation and improves access to supercomputers,” said Trish Damkroger, Senior Vice President and General Manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions at HPE. “We look forward to collaborating with the members of High Performance Software Foundation to promote open standards and participating in the Technical Advisory Committee to drive innovation in HPC.”
“Advances in scientific computing are driven by open-source collaboration among HPC developers who help push the boundaries of breakthrough technologies,” said Tim Costa, Director of HPC and Quantum at NVIDIA. “As a founding member of the HPSF, NVIDIA looks forward to bolstering the community of pioneers tackling some of humankind’s most challenging problems.”
Technical Advisory Council
To oversee working groups covering a range of HPC challenges, HPSF will form a technical advisory council (TAC). The TAC will use a governance architecture based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), drawing from member businesses and community members. Several early open-source technological initiatives are launched by the foundation, including the following:
- Spack – The package manager for HPC
- Kokkos – A programming paradigm that is portable and performance-based for creating hardware-independent contemporary C++ programs
- Viskores (formerly VTK-m) – A toolset of scientific visualization methods for accelerator systems.
- HPCToolkit – Tools for measuring and analyzing computer performance, from desktops to GPU-accelerated supercomputers
- Apptainer – This project, formerly known as Singularity, offers a fully functional, high-performance container subsystem suited for computing and HPC
- E4S – An assortment of robust, well chosen scientific software applications.
Through a number of targeted projects, such as the following, HPSF seeks to make the life of high-performance software engineers easier:
- Resources designed specifically for HPC projects for continuous integration
- Turnkey software stacks that are continuously created
- Support for architecture
- Benchmarking and performance regression testing
- Cooperation with other Linux Foundation projects, including CNCF, UEC, OpenSSF, and UXL Foundation
Organizations from all throughout the HPC ecosystem are encouraged to join the HPSF and contribute to the advancement of open-source HPC innovation. Through improved development and deployment of high-performance computing applications, this cooperative endeavor aims to increase the efficiency and accessibility of cutting-edge technology for a wide variety of consumers. This effort by the Linux Foundation highlights the increasing significance of open-source cooperation in handling the intricate possibilities and challenges in the HPC field.
“The Linux Foundation is proud to support the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation, recognizing its crucial role in unifying high-performance computing efforts,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation. “By fostering collaboration across industries and academia, HPSF will accelerate the development of open source solutions crucial for scientific computing, digital engineering, and more.”
