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



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 2023 | 9:00-12:00 | Introduction to NVIDIA BlueField technology with hands-on exercises | Rich Graham |
13:00-15:00 | Brainstorming and prototyping session | Participants | |
15:00-16:00 | Talk: NVIDIA’s Intelligent Networking Vision | Rich Graham and Steve Davey | |
16:00-17:30 | Elevator pitches: what we might want to do with BlueFields | Participants | |
19:00 | Dinner | ||
Friday, 17 February 2023 | 9:00-13:00 | Hackathon: Participants write first prototypes | Participants with support by NVIDIA engineers |

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:
- Hotel Indigo (15-20 min walk)
- Premier Inn (20-25 min walk)
- Marriott (15-20 min walk)
- Travelodge (25-30 min walk)

- Great write-up from one of our @cake-dri.bsky.social CoLs. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Good start into the week: Our paper on "Annotation-guided AoS-to-SoA conversions and GPU offloading with data views in C++" has been accepted at CPE: arxiv.org/pdf/2502.16517 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.16517
- Great to see our knowledge exchange project (cake-dri.github.io) being represented properly at meetings. Thanks to Eleanor Broadway @epcc.bsky.social
- Not to be shared yet (and therefore I put it on social media ;-): As of next autumn, we will start recruiting for a new MSc on AI Infrastructure Platforms. This aligns perfectly with our recent successes and investments into upskilling around Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI).
- It is great to be at Gregynog to learn more about gravitational waves. Excellent introductory talk by Bernard F. Schutz pointing out how computer hardware technology changed the discipline. We need the same appreciation for software now. https://sites.google.com/view/nrgregynog/home