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.
