Oak Ridge Announces GPU Hackathons

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has announced a collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) to sponsor three GPU hackathon events in 2015. The events will provide time, expertise, and computing resources for developer teams looking for hands-on experience with optimizing their applications for GPU environments using the OpenACC Directives for Accelerators standard.

According to the announcement, “The goal of each hackathon is for current or prospective user groups of large hybrid CPU-GPU systems to send teams of 3-6 developers along with either (1) a (potentially) scalable application that needs to be ported to GPU accelerators, or (2) an application running on accelerators which needs optimization. There will be intensive mentoring during this 5-day hands-on workshop, with the goal that the teams leave with applications running on GPUs, or at least with a clear roadmap of how to get there.  Our mentors come from national laboratories, universities and vendors, and besides having extensive experience in programming with OpenACC, many of them develop the OpenACC-capable compilers and help define the OpenACC standard.”

Registration for the first (April) event has already passed. Upcoming events in the series include EuroHack in July 2015 and OLCFHack in October 2015. See the GPU Hackathon information page at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory website for additional information.