Monday April 08, 2024

The SYCL HackFest @ IWOCL 2024 is sponsored by Intel and Codeplay Software.

This HackFest (Hacking Festival) will be a fun one day hacking session where the SYCL community can get together and hack on projects that they feel they could progress within a single day. The projects should be code that participating teams can modify and improve within the period of the hackathon. Having trouble coming up with a project, or don’t have code you can bring; then consider hacking on our default benchmarks project (see themes below) and help improve these for the community!

Participants will be supported by mentors that are world-leaders in SYCL development, including:

  • Tom Deakin, University of Bristol and SYCL Working Group Chair
  • Aksel Alpay, Heidelberg University and creator of AdaptiveCpp (formerly hipSYCL)
  • Thomas Applencourt, Argonne National Laboratory and SYCL Advisory Panel Chair
  • Hugh Delaney, Codeplay Software
  • Plus other representatives from the Intel and Codeplay development teams

By hacking together, we have the opportunity to discuss code, issues, SYCL features, and general queries. Through this we can demonstrate, educate, and learn within the community. Spend a few hours with us here in Chicago and hack with us and lets discover amazing things together!

Projects will be submitted to a committee consisting of 3-4 SYCL community members who will judge each project on whether they align with the project themes and are practical to complete in the time available. We expect to be able to approve 5-8 projects.

Project Submissions

To submit your project for the HackFest, please first complete the SYCL HackFest Proposal Form and then submit this form using the standard IWOCL Easychair Submission System, selecting the ‘SYCL HackFest track’. Full submission instructions are provided in the proposal form.

  • Submission Deadline: Midnight on Friday, February 16, 2024 (23:59 anywhere on Earth).
  • The submission system will remain open after this date to allow additional teams to apply and take advantage of the limited number or remaining spaces we have available.
  • Approvals will be sent out to the initial group of applications on, or before: Friday, March 1, 2024.

Project Themes

To help provide direction on the kind of projects that are most likely to be selected we would recommend proposals follow one of the following themes:

  • Performance and Optimization: Projects that can be optimized to bring performance enhancements to key parts of the software, including across multiple processor architectures.
  • SYCL 2020 Features: Implement parts of a project using features from the latest SYCL 2020 specification that could improve the structure, performance or generally make the project better.
  • CUDA to SYCL Porting: Convert a project or piece of code that contains CUDA code to SYCL using various methods including SYCLOmatic. Demonstrate a final state that shows your project working on different processors.
  • Improving Occupancy and Consistency of Run Time [Default]: Running benchmarks can be tricky. There are different considerations that need to be taken into account when writing and also running benchmarks. Is the benchmark running with high occupancy on the target processor? Does the benchmark run for long enough for the recorded timing to be a useful measure? Do the benchmarks provide consistent results? We will introduce the benchmark project to you ahead of time.

Selection Criteria

  • Projects are selected based on the viability of what can be accomplished in the approximately 6 hours of time given to work on the project. Projects should clearly state its purpose and the expected results.
  • Projects that are selected will be scoped for success. Projects should document what kind of computing resources that will be required and we will find the best fit in what is available. The available computing resources will be provided ahead of time and we hope to make multiple clusters available for attendees with GPUs from multiple vendors. If you would like to volunteer resources for the hackathon please get in touch.
  • In addition, each project should document the kind of expertise that would be helpful. (eg experts from a specific discipline, Intel Developer Cloud support, DPC++ or AdaptiveCpp).
  • Selected projects will have an opportunity to have an online tutorial session on any SYCL or oneAPI projects.
  • We expect approximately 5-8 projects to be accepted depending on the number of participants and projects submitted.

HackFest Registration (FREE)

  • Attendance at the Hackfest is FREE for the number of participants included in the original team submission.
  • Participant name changes can be made.
  • Adding extra participants will be at the discretion of the organisers, and will be subject to space limits.
  • Participants will be required to register for the IWOCL ‘HackFest’ through the normal IWOCL registration process.  A special Hackfest code will be provided for participants to apply to reveal the FREE Hackfest registration ticket.
  • Hackfest participants who also wish to attend the main IWOCL conference and/or SYCL tutorial will need to register at the prevailing rates.

Agenda

Each team will have a designated table in which to hack code together. Each team participant will bring a laptop to do the hacking.

  • 08:00 – Arrival
  • 08:30 – Welcome and introduction to Hackfest and setup
  • 09:00 – Hackfest Coding Session #1
  • 10:30 – Stretch and interaction break
  • 10:45 – Hackfest Coding Session #2
  • 12:00 – Lunch and interaction
  • 13:00 – Hackfest Coding Session #3
  • 15:00 – Stretch and interaction break
  • 15:15 – Hackfest Coding Session #4
  • 17:00 – Collate progress on all projects
  • 17:30 – Team project presentations
  • 18:15 – Thanks you – Hackfest Close
  • 19:00 – Hackathon Social – Meet at local hostelry to continue discussions (not included in free registration)