SIAM CSE 23 SYCL
SYCL’s impact on algorithms, data structures and implementations
Tom Deakin and Tobias Weinzierl
https://www.siam.org/conferences/cm/conference/cse23
The workshop will be hosted in two parts: MS I and MS II
Computational Science and Engineering software will need to embrace GPU accelerated systems as they prepare for Exascale. GPU accelerated systems dominate the top tier supercomputers. However, with multiple vendors offering competitive solutions, it is not yet clear which programming interface the applications should use as they update their codes for GPUs. With scientific software being used for many years, far beyond the lifetime of any one supercomputer, this investment in software needs to continue to flourish beyond just the next system. SYCL is an open standard that promises portable and performant heterogeneous parallel programming using modern C++. SYCL portability allows programs to run on GPU accelerated systems from all vendors. In this minisymposium, we bring together diverse groups that have recently ported part of their simulation software to SYCL. We ask them to share how the transition to SYCL and GPUs has motivated them to redesign their algorithms and numerical methods, and the implementations of those methods in software. Speakers will share whether the choice of programming model affected the algorithmic and numerical design for their scientific and engineering domains. We will also discuss how SYCL codes characteristically differ from comparable codes on the CPU, directive-based implementations such as OpenMP, or those written for the GPU using CUDA.
Programme
- Tom Deakin: Vision and Scope of the SYCL Minisymposium
- Igor Baratta: Performance-portable matrix-free finite element solvers with SYCL
- Hatem Ltaief: Making HiCMA Hardware-Agnostic with SYCL
- Ravil Dorozhinskii: Performance-portable earthquake simulation with SeisSol and SYCL
- Daniel Arndt: Implementing a SYCL Backend for Kokkos
- Tobias Weinzierl: Flavours of GPU kernels in ExaHyPE
- Will R. Saunders: Exploration of Performance-Portability in the ExCALIBUR Fusion Use Case
- Nisha Patel: Intel Developer Tools for Serious Sycl
Slides (Session 1)
Slides (Session 2)

- 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