The inaugural High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) Conference 2025 brought together developers, researchers, and industry leaders committed to building the future of performance-portable, community-driven HPC software. Held in Chicago, the four-day event offered updates from HPSF projects, insights on processor and system trends, active discussions around the future of interoperability, and collaborative working group sessions that set the stage for the year ahead.
Couldn’t join us in person? We’ve got you covered — the recordings are available on the HPSF-community YouTube channel, and sessions are linked below.
Day 1: Monday, May 5
Welcome & Foundation Overview
Opening talks introduced HPSF’s mission, community governance, and technical direction, setting the stage for two days of collaboration.
- Welcome Remarks – Christian Trott, Sandia National Laboratories
- HPSF State of the Project Overview – Todd Gamblin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Governing Board Introduction – Heidi Poxon, AWS
- TAC Introduction – Bill Hoffman, Kitware
- Working Groups Introduction – Damien Lebrun-Grandie, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Project Updates
Project leads presented on HPSF’s cutting-edge software projects, showcasing the innovative capabilities and the vibrant community driving these initiatives. These presentations showcased the breadth of innovation taking place across the Foundation’s growing portfolio of software efforts: system tools, applications, and scientific libraries.
System Tools
- HPCToolkit – Jonathon Anderson, Rice University
- Apptainer – Dave Dykstra, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
- Charliecloud – Reid Priedhorsky, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Spack – Greg Becker, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- E4S – Sameer Shende, Paratools
Applications
- WarpX – Edoardo Zoni, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Scientific Libraries:
- Viskores – Ken Moreland, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Trilinos – Curtis Ober, Sandia National Laboratories
Libraries / Programming Systems
- AMReX – Andrew Myers, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Kokkos – Christian Trott, Sandia National Laboratories
New and Prospective Projects
Panel: Status and Trends in the HPC Landscape
A panel on the current and future state of the high-performance computing shared insights into the current landscape of HPC platforms and learn about the systems you should prepare for in the near future to stay ahead in this rapidly changing field. The discussion underscored the critical need for open collaboration and community-governed foundations like HPSF to ensure sustainable, scalable innovation.
Moderator: Todd Gamblin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Panelists:
- Dan Stanzione, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), The University of Texas at Austin
- Heidi Poxon, AWS
- Sara Campbell, NNSA
- Jayesh Badwaik, Forschungszentrum Juelich
- Nur Fadel, CSCS
- Doug Jacobsen, Google LLC
- Mike Kiernan, Microsoft
Poster Sessions & Attendee Reception
The evening poster session featured contributions from over 15 institutions, including research labs around the world. Attendees explored projects, exchanged ideas, and connected over shared goals in an informal, collaborative setting. Posters presenters included:
- Daniel S. Katz, NCSA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Reid Priedhorsky, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Elaine M. Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories
- Greg Becker, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Damien Lebrun-Grandie, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
- Megan Phinney, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Angelica Loshak, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Christian Trott, Sandia National Laboratories
- Trévis Morvany, CEA
- Emil Poulsen, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
- Luc Berger-Vergiat, Sandia National Laboratories
- Siva Rajamanickam, Sandia National Laboratories
- Samir Shaikh, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, India
- Harsha Ugave, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
- James Willenbring, Sandia National Laboratories
- Nasir Attar, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
- Nils Schild, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Day 2: Tuesday, May 6
Day 2 kicked off with a welcome and overview of the day by Christian Trott, Sandia National Laboratories.
Performance & Usability on Current Systems
This session gave a comprehensive overview of the current landscape of exascale supercomputing technologies from the user perspective by digging into the nuances of transitioning between various system architectures and software stacks, focusing on usability, performance, and the common challenges faced by users.
- Performance, Usability and Issues on Current Systems – John Mellor-Crummey, Rice University
- Sparse Linear Algebra Performance using MPI+Kokkos across GPUs and GPUs – Chris Siefert, Sandia National Laboratories
- Perspectives on Application Development for Emerging Platforms – Phil Sakievich, Sandia National Laboratories
Panel: Processor Trends and What They Mean for Software
A panel on processor trends and what they mean for software took a look at the rapid acceleration of processor innovation in recent years that has introduced both opportunities and challenges for developers of high-performance software. The panel explored the implications of these advancements, the new challenges that lie ahead, and how our community can collaboratively address them.
Moderator: Christian Trott, Sandia National Laboratories
Panelists:
- Kristi Belcher, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Brian Cornille, AMD
- Patrick Fasano, NextSilicon
- Barton Fiske, NVIDIA
- Michael James, Cerebras
- Andy Warner, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
Working Group Breakouts and Reports
HPSF Conference attendees split into Working Group breakout sessions to share updates and plan next steps in key focus areas. Then attendees reconvened for Working Group Breakout Reports during which session leaders share outcomes, priorities, and new areas for collaboration.
Working Group Sessions:
- Benchmarking – led by Olga Pearce, LLNL
- CI – led by Alec Scott, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Zack Galbreath, Kitware, Inc
- Interoperability – led by Damien Lebrun-Grandie, ORNL
- Outreach – led by Jennifer Bly, Linux Foundation
- Prospective Projects – led by Chris Clark, Linux Foundation
HPSF Community BOF
The HPSF Community Birds of a Feather was an open forum to discuss successes and identify areas for improvement, fostering an open dialogue about our collective vision. Community members were encouraged to voice ideas, ask questions, and suggest directions for the future.
Moderator: Julien Bigot, CEA
Panelists:
- Ansar Calloo, CEA
- Nur Fadel, CSCS
- Todd Gamblin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Angelica Loshak, Los Alamos National Laboratory
- John Mellor-Crummey, Rice University
- Julia Plews, Sandia National Laboratories
- Andy Warner, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
- Bill Hoffman, Kitware
Wrapping up the day, Christian Trott of Sandia National Laboratories gave closing remarks with reflections on progress made, gratitude for community contributions, and an open invitation to continue building together.
Days 3-4: Wednesday and Thursday, May 6 & 7
The last two days of HPSFCon consisted of project meetings, featuring talks from users and contributors — find links to each playlist below:
- AMReX Community Breakout
- Apptainer
- Charliecloud
- Kokkos User Group Meeting
- Spack User Meeting
- Trilinos User-Developers Group (TUG) Meeting
In addition, HPX hosted a session non charting the path forward.
Watch the HPSFCon Sessions
All HPSFCon recordings are now available for public viewing. Watch and share the sessions from the HPSF-community YouTube channel playlist, or click the individual links above to explore specific talks.
A Big Success
From packed sessions to hallway conversations that sparked new ideas, the HPSF community showed up in full force to shape the future of open source high performance software.
We’d like to thank all our speakers and attendees who made this first HPSF Conference such a success!