On Jan. 21 (Thu), 2016, Argonne will host the first International workshop on FPGAs for scientific simulation and data analytics. The members of the Re-form project, an Argonne LDRD project started in the end of 2015, will lead this workshop.
The performance evolution of high-performance computing (HPC) and data analytic systems has been governed in the past by integration improvements in the CMOS technology. This trend is expected to continue until the mid-2020s when CMOS features will reach 5-7 nm. In the following period, performance progress for CMOS-based integrated circuit devices will no longer come from higher levels of integration, and other approaches will be needed.
The convergence of several technologies makes HPC-relevant FPGA-powered systems attractive. These technologies are (1) new FPGA system-on-chip devices featuring multicore CPUs, FPGAs, and thousands of hardened floating-point data signal processing blocks; (2) robust compiler technologies capable of targeting heterogeneous systems; and (3) tools for transforming intermediate representation objects into a hardware description language such as VHDL and Verilog, available from research groups and from vendors. These, combined with the push toward expressing parallelism and data dependencies specified by parallel programming APIs (e.g., OpenMP, OpenCL), opens up FPGA-based solutions for serious exploration in scientific simulations and data analytics.
The workshop will pursue several objectives. First, it will establish the state of the art in this domain internationally. Second, it will help understand trends in FPGA technologies and better identify and understand open problems and challenges. Third, it will provide a unique opportunity to identify and to discuss potential collaborations.
The workshop is organized to maximize interactions and discussions among participants. It will feature talks from key players of FPGA and scientific simulation and data analytics domains. Considerable time will be allotted during coffee breaks, lunch, dinner, and special sessions to discuss potential collaborations.
This workshop is by invitation only. Those who are interested in attending should contact Kazutomo Yoshii at ky@anl.gov, including your experiences on FPGA in your e-mail message.
For information about the meeting and its agenda, see the website.