• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
OPTIMA

OPTIMA

Optimizing Industrial Applications for Heterogeneous HPC systems

  • The Project
  • Partners
  • Components
    • Applications
    • Programming Environment
  • News and Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Press
  • Publications and Media
    • Publications
    • Deliverables
    • Open OPTIMA Catalog
    • Media
  • Contact

The OPTIMA Project

You are here: Home / The OPTIMA Project

Problem statement and challenges

Accelerators are devices that can provide very high performance and efficiency when executing certain applications. Towards this end, for certain HPC applications, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can significantly outperform GPUs which in turn significantly outperform CPUs. Therefore, it is highly desirable to optimize HPC applications so as to take the most advantage possible of such reconfigurable accelerators. However, FPGA are considered difficult to be programmed, interconnected and handled, especially within parallel systems. Moreover, the heterogeneity introduced by these accelerators makes the efficient management of the resources as well as the intercommunication between the different devices much more complex than in homogeneous conventional HPC systems.

Due to management and difficulty in programming, most HPC systems have at most a limited number of nodes with FPGAs as accelerators while several do not have any accelerators at all. For instance, no system in the top 500 list no system utilizes FPGAs. On the other hand “architectural specialisation with FPGAs or even application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) could be important to overcoming the bottleneck introduced by the slowdown of Moore’s Law”. Since no more than ten years ago GPUs were in a similar situation, as they were available only in experimental clusters and testbeds, and now they dominate the Green 500, it is highly likely “that we will see the same thing with FPGAs at some point as well.” Moreover, as clearly demonstrated in a very recent analysis of the energy efficiency of the Top-500 systems in the last almost 20 years, we should find new architectures and utilize accelerators if we want to keep providing growing computing power in HPC systems, at the current rate.

Depending on the utilized accelerator(s) or the parallelization that should be achieved, it is necessary to use different languages and specifications (e.g. CUDA, OpenMP, OpenCL, MPI, GA). This variety of programming paradigms increases significantly the complexity of the software development, especially since the developers will also try to get the maximum performance from the underlying accelerator hardware, which requires certain skills and/or exposure to high level synthesis (HLS) tools. All the above make the development of HPC applications, utilizing tailor-made hardware accelerators, a forbiddingly costly and complex process especially for the SMEs that are, in general, very cost-conscious.

OPTIMA is a heavily SME-driven project (note that almost 60% of OPTIMA’s budget goes to SMEs) which will allow the participating industries, coming from different domains, as well as applications developed by academics and used by industry, to take advantage of the new, upcoming, and promising FPGA-based HPC systems. Towards this aim, OPTIMA will utilize: 

  • two novel FPGA-based HPC platforms 
  • several HPC programming environments 
  • the skills needed so as to allow HPC applications to take full advantage of the underlying heterogeneous HPC systems. Within OPTIMA several industrial applications, developed by the project partners, as well as a set of open-source libraries and applications utilized in numerous industrial sectors, will be optimized so as to fully utilize all the unique features of the FPGA-based HPC systems. Moreover, the open-source libraries and applications will allow industries outside the consortium to take advantage of the current and future heterogeneous HPC systems.

Mission and objectives

OPTIMA’s main goal is to prove that there are several HPC applications that can take advantage of the future highly heterogeneous FPGA-populated HPC systems while, by using the newly introduced tools and runtimes, the application porting/development can be almost as simple as developing software for conventional HPC systems incorporating GPUs. Special emphasis will be given to the efficient processing of both conventional

HPC applications (e.g. Fluid Dynamics, Underground Simulations, etc.) as well as the more recently introduced machine/deep learning ones (e.g. Robotics);

OPTIMA aims to:

  1.  Develop optimized versions of applications and open-source libraries that will be executed on FPGA-based HPC systems, at a significantly higher performance-to-energy ratio and/or producing more accurate results than the existing HPC systems, including those consisting of low power CPUs (e.g. ARM) and/or GPUs.
  2. Provide guidelines and reference open-source designs so as to allow the application porting, by third parties, to FPGA-based heterogeneous platforms to be done in time similar to that needed for porting an HPC application to systems utilizing GPUs and/or many-cores.

Footer

Tweets by optima_hpc

Cookie Policy

Follow US

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

OPTIMA

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 955739. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Greece, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland.

Copyright © 2023 OPTIMA. All rights reserved. Return to top

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Read More


Cookie settingsACCEPT ALL

Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement1 yearThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid1 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form.
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo