The Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel has been a hub for technological innovation and research for over 100 years. With the establishment of the oneAPI Center of Excellence, the university has taken a significant step towards advancing the field of high-performance computing.
Under the leadership of Dr. Gal Oren, the oneAPI Center of Excellence has made tremendous strides in advancing the adoption and development of the oneAPI technology. Dr. Oren, a leading expert in parallel programming, has brought his years of experience to create a dynamic and innovative learning environment for students and researchers alike.
Since its inception, the oneAPI Center of Excellence has been dedicated to creating a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about advancing the field of high-performance computing. Through a combination of educational resources, research, and community events, the center has fostered an environment of collaboration and innovation.
Transforming Scientific Codes to Heterogeneous Systems
One of the center's most significant successes has been the development of several new frameworks for parallel programming. Drawing on the expertise of the center's faculty and researchers, the frameworks incorporate cutting-edge techniques and methodologies for developing highly efficient parallel programs. A notable framework ports scientific codes into heterogeneous systems using novel natural language processing (NLP) techniques by advising on needed transformations automatically.
For machine programming, a collaboration with several counterparts from Intel Labs (led by Dr. Tim Mattson) yielded two systems that are able to advise the insertion of parallel directives or functions to a serial code based on a transformer model that was trained on a large corpus of HPC codes. The first, PragFormer+OMPify, manages to classify work-sharing pragmas in serial code on the fly, even without compilation. The second, MPI-rical, translate or complete serial code into a distributed code with MPI functions.
Training Next-Generation Engineers into the New Heterogeneous World
The oneAPI Center of Excellence has also been instrumental in advancing the education of the next generation of high-performance computing professionals. Through its innovative teaching methods and hands-on approach, the center has provided students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the field.
One of the center's most exciting projects has been the development of a new course on shared-memory parallelism. The course, led by Dr. Oren, has been highly popular among students, with dozens of accepted to the class, and has received rave reviews for its engaging and informative curriculum. Through a combination of lectures, programming exercises, and collaborative projects, students have gained a deep understanding of parallel programming principles and have honed their skills in developing highly efficient parallel applications. Specifically, all students participated in a semester-long workshop by Yehonatan Fridman (a PhD student and oneAPI student ambassador) about oneAPI, the usage of the Intel® Developer Cloud, and OpenMP* programming. In light of demand, the course is to be delivered at Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University as well.
A Forward-Looking Vision
The success of the oneAPI Center of Excellence has not gone unnoticed. The center has attracted the attention of leading researchers and organizations worldwide and has become a hub for collaboration and innovation. Its impact on high-performance computing is already being felt, and the center will continue to be a driving force in the future.
As the oneAPI Center of Excellence continues to grow and evolve, it will undoubtedly be at the forefront of advancing the field of high-performance computing. With its dedicated faculty, innovative research, and collaborative community, the center is poised to contribute significantly to the field for years to come.
Dr. Gal Oren and student ambassador Yehonatan Fridman at ISC HPC 2023 Conference.
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