The Linux Foundation | 13 May 2024
HPSF will build, promote, and advance an open and portable core software stack for high performance computing.
HAMBURG, Germany – May 13, 2024 – Today, the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, is excited to announce the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF). Through a series of technical projects, HPSF aims to build, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high performance computing (HPC) by increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts.
As use of HPC becomes ubiquitous in scientific computing and digital engineering, and AI use cases multiply, more and more data centers deploy GPUs and other compute accelerators. HPSF will provide a neutral space for pivotal projects in the high performance computing ecosystem, enabling industry, academia, and government entities to collaborate on the scientific software stack.
HPSF benefits from strong support across the HPC landscape, including Premier Members Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL); General Members AMD, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Intel, Kitware, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), NVIDIA, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); and Associate Members University of Maryland, University of Oregon, and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). HPSF will set up a technical advisory committee (TAC) to manage working groups tackling a variety of HPC topics. Drawing from member organizations and community participants, the TAC will follow a governance model based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
The HPSF is launching with the following initial open source technical projects:
- Spack: the HPC package manager.
- Kokkos: a performance-portable programming model for writing modern C++ applications in a hardware-agnostic way.
- Viskores (formerly VTK-m): a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for accelerator architectures.
- HPCToolkit: performance measurement and analysis tools for computers ranging from desktop systems to GPU-accelerated supercomputers.
- Apptainer: Formerly known as Singularity, Apptainer is a Linux Foundation project providing a high performance, full featured HPC and computing optimized container subsystem.
- E4S: a curated, hardened distribution of scientific software packages.
HPSF aims to make life easier for high performance software developers through a number of focused initiatives, including:
- Continuous integration resources tailored for HPC projects
- Continuously built, turnkey software stacks
- Architecture support
- Performance regression testing and benchmarking
- Collaborations with other LF projects, such as OpenSSF, UEC, UXL Foundation, and CNCF
The HPSF welcomes organizations from across the HPC ecosystem to get involved and help drive innovation in open source HPC solutions. To learn more about the HPSF, including how to get involved, contribute, and become a member, please visit hpsf.io. HPSF members will also be hosting a Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) session during the ISC-HPC conference on Monday, May 13th at 1:00 pm CEST. Interested participants are encouraged to attend, see session details here.
SUPPORTING QUOTES
"AMD is a leader in HPC and a long-term supporter of the open-source software community. By joining the HPSF, we are using our collective hardware and software expertise to help develop a portable, open-source software stack for HPC across industry, academia, and government."
— Andrew Dieckmann, Corporate Vice President, General Manager, Data Center Accelerator Business at AMD.
“Argonne has a long history of developing widely used open-source software, and we are honored to join HPSF as a founding member. The collaborative environment and access to resources that HPSF will provide will enable the HPC community to collectively develop the software needed for future-generation HPC systems.”
— Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory.
“The HPC community has a long history of innovation being driven by open source projects. 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.”
— Ian Colle, General Manager, Advanced Computing and Simulation at AWS.
“Innovation in HPC has addressed and assisted in solving major societal problems. Supporting the open-source software ecosystem, which can attract a variety of stakeholders, is therefore crucial. As one of India's leading HPC research organizations, C-DAC is thrilled to be a part of this global initiative of HPSF, which aims for open collaboration and accessibility among the HPC communities worldwide leading to affordable HPC.”
— E Magesh, Director General at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
“Open collaboration is essential to HPC innovation and improves access to supercomputers. 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."
— Trish Damkroger, Senior Vice President and General Manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions at HPE.
“HPC has long been a unifying force in industry, breaking through vendor-locked barriers and driving standardization across all layers of the software stack. High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) continues this de facto standardization by defining a set of open source software that runs on a diversity of hardware architectures. Intel is proud to be a founding member and continue our long-standing contribution to the projects in HPSF.” — Sanjiv Shah, Vice President with Intel’s Software Engineering Group, General Manager of Developer Software Engineering.
"Throughout our 25+ year history, Kitware has been a leader in advancing scientific software with significant efforts such as ParaView, VTK-m, ADIOS, and Spack. We fully support the growth of the scientific software ecosystem and the advancement of high-performance computing. Today, we are incredibly honored to be a member of the High Performance Software Foundation and look forward to working alongside the other members of the foundation to deliver innovation through open source HPC solutions." — Bill Hoffman, CTO at Kitware.
“More and more of the software used in providing HPC environments is being provided by HPC using sites like ours. We are happy that there are well-managed homes for HPC software and are pleased to be a part of this important community solution.”
— Gary Grider, High Performance Computing Division Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“Since its initial open source release in 2014, Spack’s community has grown to include over 1,300 contributors and many thousands of users. Spack is now a standard tool for building, developing, and maintaining HPC software. Joining HPSF enables us to establish sustainable governance, to broaden our collaborations with developers from labs, industry, and academia, and to continue to grow the project. We are excited about the road ahead.”
— Todd Gamblin, Spack Project Lead and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
"The formation of HPSF is an important step for the stewardship of software for large-scale systems. With a focus on advancing the capabilities of high performance computing (HPC) facilities across government, industry and academia, this partnership will benefit everyone's investments towards a common production environment for the broader HPC ecosystem. We take pride in the inclusion of LLNL-developed software among its inaugural initiatives, and eagerly anticipate active participation with the HPC community to refine a shared software stack and bolster the security of the HPC supply chain.”
— Bronis de Supinski, Chief Technology Officer for Livermore Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
"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. By fostering collaboration across industries and academia, HPSF will accelerate the development of open source solutions crucial for scientific computing, digital engineering, and more."
— Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation
“Advances in scientific computing are driven by open-source collaboration among HPC developers who help push the boundaries of breakthrough technologies. As a founding member of the HPSF, NVIDIA looks forward to bolstering the community of pioneers tackling some of humankind’s most challenging problems.”
— Tim Costa, Director of HPC and Quantum at NVIDIA
“Oak Ridge National Laboratory is proud to be a founding member of the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF). Developing a portable, high-performance software stack is crucial to scientific advancement across various disciplines. Our alignment with HPSF's mission mirrors ORNL's steadfast commitment to innovation and collaborative pursuits. Leveraging our extensive expertise in computing, we are poised to offer invaluable contributions to the Foundation's initiatives. We eagerly anticipate collaborating with our fellow members to propel HPSF towards its envisioned success.”
— Georgia Tourassi, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
“The HPCToolkit project team is pleased to have HPCToolkit included as a High-Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) project. Through participation in the HPSF, we look forward to expanding HPCToolkit’s user community, increasing its network of contributors, and improving its long-term sustainability.”
— John Mellor-Crummey, Professor of Computer Science at Rice University and HPCToolkit Project Lead.
"With a user base which has grown well beyond the confines of its roots in the US Department of Energy, Kokkos needs to evolve into a true collaborative community project for long-term success and sustainability. Joining HPSF provides a neutral place for developers to come together and work on the development, maintenance and growth of Kokkos. HPSF will enable Kokkos to realize its full potential as a leading solution for achieving performance portability for HPC software."
— Christian Trott, Co-lead of the Kokkos Project, Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories
“As a founding member, the University of Oregon welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with HPSF to help create an ecosystem of HPC and AI/ML tools that will have a lasting and sustainable global impact. We hope to collaborate on a software stack (E4S) and contribute our expertise in the areas of performance engineering and continuous integration/continuous deployment of software.”
— Professor Sameer Shende, Research Professor and Director, Performance Research Laboratory at University of Oregon.
“At the University of Maryland (UMD), we are excited and honored to join HPSF as a founding member. In December 2023, UMD approved a blanket IP waiver to enable Principal Investigators to release data and software under open access and open source licensing requirements, for those sponsors that require it. We look forward to onboarding HPC and distributed AI open-source projects developed at UMD to join the growing list of HPSF technical projects.”
— Professor Abhinav Bhatele, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Director, Parallel Software and Systems Group at the University of Maryland.
“The Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation looks forward to collaborating with the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) to drive open source and open standards based accelerated computing. UXL Foundation and HPSF member projects have been collaborating for several years. HPSF initiatives in continuous integration, software stacks, and architectural support will make it possible for HPC projects to easily incorporate and deploy UXL Foundation components.”
— Rod Burns, Steering Committee Chairperson, UXL Foundation
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