Todd Gamblin’s governing board introduction at HPSFCon 2026 is a clear window into what the High Performance Software Foundation is, what it’s trying to accomplish, and why the HPC community should care.
Gamblin, HPSF Governing Board Chair and creator of Spack, brings both the credibility and the clarity to kick off HPSF Conference 2026. HPSF, which operates under the Linux Foundation, was established to provide a neutral home for performance-portable, community-driven software that underpins scientific computing at scale. The projects it stewards — including Kokkos, Spack, AMReX, WarpX, Charliecloud, and others — are already running on some of the world’s largest supercomputers.
What makes HPSF’s model significant is its explicit commitment to community governance and sustainability. Open source HPC software has long struggled with a familiar tension: being freely available while remaining adequately maintained. By bringing these projects under a foundation umbrella with industry and institutional backing, HPSF is working to break that cycle — creating stable, long-term homes for software that the scientific community depends on.
For newcomers to the HPSF ecosystem, this talk will help you get oriented. For existing community members, it’s a useful annual calibration on the foundation’s direction and where things stand heading into the rest of 2026. Gamblin covers the structure of community governance, introduces the Technical Advisory Council, and frames the broader mission of growing open HPC software beyond its traditional audience.
HPSF is a bet that the open source model, properly supported and governed, is the most sustainable path for the performance-critical software stack that scientific discovery depends on.
View the full playlist from HPSFCon 2026: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRKq_yxxHw29oZTboj6fmdYhQMWHUaj4u.