Announcing a Series of Worldwide GPU Hackathons in 2018

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ORNL is hosting a series of GPU Hackathons in 2018. The first event will take place March 5-9 at TU Dresden in Germany.

The goal of each Hackathon is for current or prospective user groups of large hybrid CPU-GPU systems to send teams of at least 3 developers along with either (1) a (potentially) scalable application that could benefit from GPU accelerators, or (2) an application running on accelerators that need optimization. There will be intensive mentoring during this 5-day hands-on workshop, with the goal that the teams leave with applications running on GPUs, or at least with a clear roadmap of how to get there. Our mentors come from national laboratories, universities, and vendors, and besides having extensive experience in programming GPUs, many of them develop the GPU-capable compilers and help define standards such as OpenACC and OpenMP.

General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) potentially offer exceptionally high memory bandwidth and performance for a wide range of applications. The challenge in utilizing such accelerators has been learning how to programming them. These hackathons are intended to help overcome this challenge for new GPU programmers and also to help existing GPU programmers to further optimize their applications. Any and all GPU programming paradigms are welcome.

Programming experience with OpenACC or CUDA is not a requirement. You will learn quickly in the intense 5-day schedule, working on your code 95% of the time with the mentors.  In the weeks preceding the hackathon, you will have a chance to attend training to prepare you for the event. Prior GPU experience is not required!

Additional 2018 Hackathon are planned for Australia, UC Boulder, Brookhaven Lab, CSCS Switzerland, and ORNL.

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