The future of high performance computing is getting more complex by the day. Hardware architectures are evolving rapidly, AI is reshaping funding priorities, and engineering teams are under pressure to deliver production ready software across increasingly diverse systems.
For organizations like Sandia National Laboratories and the Kokkos Project, solving those challenges requires more than technical expertise. It requires collaboration built on shared governance, trusted infrastructure, and open development.
In a recent conversation with Christian Trott of Sandia National Laboratories and the Kokkos project, we discussed why Sandia became a founding member of the High Performance Software Foundation, how the HPSF community has accelerated collaboration, and why the future of HPC depends on open ecosystems.
Building Open Source Collaboration on Equal Footing
According to Trott, Sandia has long been committed to open source software, particularly in high performance computing. But even successful projects often run into organizational barriers.
Questions around ownership, governance, and technical direction can slow collaboration and make it difficult for outside contributors to participate confidently.
“We really looked for a path forward for open source projects on enabling better collaboration, enabling collaboration on equal footing,” Trott explained.
For Sandia, HPSF became the structure that made that possible.
As a Linux Foundation project, HPSF provides a neutral governance model that helps organizations collaborate without concerns around project ownership or uneven influence. That neutrality has opened the door for broader participation across institutions, research organizations, startups, and industry partners.
From Individual Projects to Shared Development
One of the biggest outcomes Sandia has seen since joining HPSF is stronger cross organizational contribution.
Trott pointed to Spack as one example. Sandia now contributes directly to parts of the Spack package that originated outside the institution.
At the same time, Kokkos, which originated at Sandia, is now receiving major contributions from external organizations, including France’s Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, also known as CEA.
“CEA is now contributing as much to Kokkos as Sandia does,” Trott said.
That kind of balanced collaboration creates what Trott described as a “force multiplier” for development teams.
Instead of every organization solving the same problems independently, contributors can pool engineering resources, share maintenance responsibilities, and move projects forward together.
Why HPC Needs Collaboration More Than Ever
The HPC industry is entering a period of major transition.
AI has pulled attention, talent, and funding toward new infrastructure investments. At the same time, the underlying hardware ecosystem continues to grow more complicated.
New accelerator architectures, AI focused hardware, and rapidly shifting performance requirements mean that software portability and engineering efficiency are becoming increasingly important.
Trott believes that reality makes collaboration essential.
“We can’t afford to redevelop everything at every institution,” he said. “We have to lean on collaboration in order to sustain the projects we have.”
For HPSF, that challenge represents a major opportunity.
By creating a vendor neutral home for production grade HPC software, HPSF gives projects a place to share engineering practices, collaborate on portability solutions, and collectively adapt to evolving architectures.
Moving Beyond Research Prototypes
Trott also highlighted a major difference between traditional HPC communities and the engineering focused culture emerging within HPSF.
Many HPC conferences and academic spaces focus heavily on prototypes, experimental research, and algorithm development. While those areas remain important, production software introduces an entirely different set of challenges.
Questions like these become critical:
- How do you build reliable CI pipelines?
- How do you improve supply chain security?
- How do you maintain portability across architectures?
- How do you mature projects for long term sustainability?
According to Trott, that engineering mindset has been one of the most valuable parts of the HPSF community.
“What the HPSF community does is it focuses on how to deliver actual production solutions,” he said.
For the Kokkos project, that has translated into stronger engineering practices, more mature development workflows, and direct knowledge sharing with other projects inside the ecosystem.
Lowering Barriers for Industry Contributions
Another major shift since joining HPSF has been increased participation from industry.
Trott noted that both large companies and startups have become more willing to contribute directly to Kokkos.
A major reason comes down to trust.
By operating under the Linux Foundation umbrella, HPSF provides organizations with clear governance, legal structure, and intellectual property protections that make contribution approvals easier internally.
“It made it a much smoother experience for potential industry contributors to convince their own legal departments that they can participate in the project,” Trott explained.
That clarity removes friction for organizations that want to participate in open source HPC development but need confidence around licensing, governance, and long term stewardship.
The Future of HPC Will Be Built Together
As HPC systems become more heterogeneous and software stacks become more demanding, no single organization can solve every challenge alone.
That reality is driving a broader shift toward shared engineering, open governance, and community driven development.
For Sandia, Kokkos, and the growing HPSF ecosystem, collaboration is not simply a nice idea. It is becoming a requirement for building sustainable, production ready high performance software.
The work happening inside HPSF shows what becomes possible when projects move beyond isolated development and toward open, vendor neutral collaboration.
And frankly, that beats twenty organizations all rebuilding the same thing in twenty slightly different ways. Engineers have better things to do.
Learn more about the High Performance Software Foundation and explore the growing ecosystem of open source HPC projects and contributors.
About Christian, HPSF Board Member and Principal Member of Staff at Sandia National Laboratory
Christian Trott is a high performance computing expert with extensive experience in designing and implementing software for modern HPC systems. He is a principal member of staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he co-leads the Kokkos core team developing performance portability solutions for engineering and science applications. Christian is also the head of Sandia’s delegation to the ISO C++ standards committee, and a principal author of C++ standard features such as mdspan and linear algebra support. He also serves as adviser to numerous application teams, helping them redesign their codes using Kokkos and achieve performance portability for the next generation of supercomputers.
In the past, Christian contributed significantly to numerous scientific software projects such as Trilinos and LAMMPS. He earned a doctorate in theoretical physics with a focus on computational material research from the Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany.