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SC16 to Feature Milestones in Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Programming Languages, Open Standards, and Open Source Tools

Beaverton, OR, Nov. 9, 2016 – SC16, the international conference for high-performance computing (HPC), networking, storage, and analysis, will feature sessions that highlight recent heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) momentum. SC16 brings together the international supercomputing community to discuss the technologies that will shape the future of large-scale technical computing and data-driven science.

WHO: The HSA Foundation, a non-profit consortium whose goal is making programming for parallel computing easy and pervasive. Participants in the SC16 HSA sessions include:

  • HSA Foundation Chairman and Senior Director of Radeon Open Compute for AMD Gregory Stoner
  • AMD Senior Fellow Design Engineer and GPU CTO Ben Sander
  • AMD Senior Member of Technical Staff Mayank Daga

WHAT: HSA is a standardized platform design supported by more than 40 technology companies and 17 universities that unlocks the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in most modern electronic devices. HSA sessions at SC16 will highlight progress toward the Foundation's goal of bringing true heterogeneous computing to platforms including vision based IoT systems, mobile devices, desktops, HPC systems, AR/VR environments, and servers. HSA-related sessions at SC16 include:

WHERE: Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City

WHEN: Nov. 13-18, 2016; visit the SC16 website for specific session times

"Many HSA Foundation members such as AMD are now delivering a wide range of heterogeneous systems, including those based on HSA," noted HSA Foundation President Dr. John Glossner. "It's very exciting as one of the Foundation's goals is to bring true heterogeneous computing to an array of platforms, some of which include Deep Neural Networks (DNN's), vision based IoT systems, mobile devices, desktops, high-performance computing (HPC) systems, AR/VR environments, and servers."

"The HSA Foundation is a strong proponent of open source development tools directly and through its member companies," said HSA Foundation Chairman Greg Stoner. "AMD's Radeon Open Compute Platform ("ROCm") initiative, for example, brings a rich heterogeneous programming foundation for developers, and offers an array of development tools now freely available supporting HSA." 

Stoner added that ROCm via an HSA standardized object loader supports two compiler foundations:

  • LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) compiler supports:
    • HCC compiler for heterogeneous C++ with PSTL development
    • HIP compiler for simply porting CUDA codes
    • Continuum's Anaconda with Numba for supporting Python development
    • Khronos Group's OpenCL C-based programming language
  • SUSE GCC via enablement of HSA runtimes and HSA object format in conjunction with General Processor Technologies and Parmance

About the HSA Foundation

The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a non-profit consortium of SoC IP vendors, OEMs, Academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs, whose goal is making programming for parallel computing easy and pervasive. HSA members are building a heterogeneous computing ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, which combines scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU, while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance with low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation using CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, while supporting a diverse set of high-level programming languages, and creating the foundation for next-generation, general-purpose computing.

Follow the HSA Foundation on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Return to: 2016 News Releases