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DPU Hackathon 2023

DPU Hackathon 2023

16/17 February 2023
Durham University, Department of Computer Science, Durham, UK (hybrid, in person preferred)
In collaboration with NVIDIA Networking

Supported by Durham’s Department of Computer Science, DiRAC and ExCALIBUR’s H&ES programme

Durham’s Department of Computer Science, in collaboration with Durham’s DiRAC facilities and Durham’s ExCALIBUR H&ES installations, has organised a 1.5 day hackathon on how to use NVIDIA BlueField technology.

BlueField-empowered systems are supercomputers, where each individual networking card is equipped with additional ARM processors. These processors can, for example, take ownership of data movements between nodes, i.e. release the host from messaging-related work, manipulate message content while the messages fly through the network, own checkpointing, …

During the hybrid workshop, participants will first get a brief intro into BlueField technology, and can then try out prepared exercises on these machines. After that, we host a series of talks and brainstorming sessions on how this technology could enable next-generation simulation software. Finally, NVIDIA’s experts will be available to help with some prototyping of ideas on BlueField cards.

Programme

The workshop will be hosted by Durham’s Department of Computer Science. However, we will accommodate participation via Zoom.

Thursday, 16 February 20239:00-12:00Introduction to NVIDIA BlueField technology with hands-on exercisesRich Graham
13:00-15:00Brainstorming and prototyping sessionParticipants
15:00-16:00Talk: NVIDIA’s Intelligent Networking VisionRich Graham and Steve Davey
16:00-17:30Elevator pitches: what we might want to do with BlueFieldsParticipants
19:00Dinner
Friday, 17 February 20239:00-13:00Hackathon: Participants write first prototypesParticipants with support by NVIDIA engineers
The workshop will be located within the Computer Science’s visualisation laboratory on the first floor.

Call for participants

The course is open to all researchers free of charge. Participants should

  • have C or FORTRAN programming knowledge;
  • MPI expertise;
  • Sign up for access to DINE through the project do009.

Registration

Registration is closed.

Accommodation and travel

There is no support for accommodation and travel, but we can point out that there are a few hotels nearby that guests of the department use frequently. Participants are expected to make all booking themselves:

@tobiasweinzierl.bsky.social

  • (no title)
    It is great to have several high profile speakers today at our AI for Science Day in collaboration with @nvidiaaidev.bsky.social and Dell.
  • (no title)
    This is a preprint I'm not involved in directly, but it is "nevertheless" worth reading if you are into reduced and mixed precision: arxiv.org/abs/2504.06889 https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06889
  • (no title)
    It would be nice to see a few scientific computing applications: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMP828/assistant-professor-in-computer-science This is a permanent position with the potential to be promoted all the way up to full prof over the years. Particularly well suited for post docs as their first academic post.
  • (no title)
    There's an interesting Archer2 training course in Durham this month: https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/250423-modern-c/ Registration is still open.
  • (no title)
    Thanks to Gokberk Kabacaoglu's initiative, we now finally have our book impact section up: https://scicomp.webspace.durham.ac.uk/scicomp-contributes-to-three-new-springer-publications/ One of the books originates from our module Parallel Scientific Computing in level 3, one from @miscada.bsky.social's professional skills module, and one from AI.