What is a GPU Bootcamp?

GPU bootcamps are free, one- or two-day events designed to teach scientists and researchers how to start quickly accelerating codes on GPUs. Participants will be introduced to available libraries, programming models, and platforms and will learn the basics of GPU programming through extensive hands-on collaboration based on real-life codes using the OpenACC programming model. GPU Bootcamp is organized collaboratively by OpenACC.org, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, and Linux Academy.

What is Covered During the Event?

The GPU bootcamp includes an overview of GPU libraries, tools, programming models, and platforms. Additionally, OpenACC lectures and labs are paired together with a working session where participants work on accelerating one or several mini-applications on GPUs. Students will be working in teams. No previous experience with OpenACC directives or GPU programming in general is required; however, programming experience with C, C++, or Fortran is desirable. Exposure to parallel programming methodologies is also helpful. Students are expected to bring their laptops to the event to access labs and to work on the mini-applications using GPU resources in the cloud.

Why Attend a GPU Bootcamp?

If you want to start using GPUs to accelerate codes quickly and efficiently, a GPU Bootcamp is the place to go! You will learn a variety of tools for GPU-accelerated computing, master key acceleration techniques with the OpenACC programming model, then apply your knowledge to a real code. After the event, you will be ready to start accelerating your own code.

Why OpenACC is the Tool of Choice for these Events

The OpenACC programming model helps scientists and researchers start programming GPUs with significantly less effort than is required with a low-level model such as OpenCL or CUDA. OpenACC is used at these events together with GPU-accelerated libraries to simplify the first steps of running your code on GPUs, to get results faster, and understand GPU programming. Applications ported to GPUs using OpenACC can also run in parallel on all the cores of a multi-core CPU. This enables development on CPU-only systems if or when GPUs are not available. By simply recompiling for the different targets, the same code can run on both CPUs and GPUs without modification.

Upcoming GPU Bootcamps

2019 was a banner year with over 20 GPU Bootcamps held worldwide. We are currently working on the 2020 calendar of events and details will be available soon.

Additional Resources

Participants are invited to apply for full five-day GPU hackathons designed to help accelerate their own codes. During five-day hackathons, participants work exclusively on their own codes with the help of dedicated mentors. GPU hackathons are held around the world with applications open through Oak Ridge National Laboratory Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) and OpenACC.org. Participants at past GPU Hackathons report them to be fun, productive, and very rewarding events. We will be honored to have you as a part of these events.

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