About · Kokkos

Core

Kokkos Core is a programming model for parallel algorithms that use many-core chips and share memory among those cores. The programming model includes computation abstractions for frequently used parallel computing patterns, policies that provide details for how those computing patterns are applied, and execution spaces that denote on which cores the parallel computation is performed. The programming model also includes patterns for common data structures, policies that provide details for how those data structures are laid out in memory, and memory spaces that denote in which memory the data reside. The Kokkos Core programming model works by requiring that application development teams implement their algorithms in terms of Kokkos’ patterns, policies, and spaces. Kokkos Core can then map these algorithms onto the target architecture according to architecture-specific rules necessary to achieve best performance. While other programming models support execution patterns, execution policies, execution spaces, and memory spaces; only Kokkos supports data patterns and policies, which are necessary for performance portability.

Kernels

Kokkos Kernels is a software library of linear algebra and graph algorithms used across many HPC applications to achieve best (not just good) performance on every architecture. The baseline version of this library is written using the Kokkos Core programming model for portability and good performance. The library has architecture-specific optimizations or uses vendor-specific versions of these mathematical algorithms where needed. This reduces the amount of architecture-specific software that an application team potentially needs to develop, thus further reducing their (modification cost)to achieve “best in class” performance. Find the code and more information at https://github.com/kokkos/kokkos-kernels

Tools

Kokkos Tools is an innovative “plug in” software interface and a growing set of performance measurement and debugging tools that plug into that interface for application development teams to analyze the execution and memory performance of their software. Teams use this performance profiling and debugging information to determine how well they have designed and implemented their algorithms and to identify portions of their software that should be improved or behave erroneous. Kokkos Tools interfaces leverage the Kokkos Core programming model interface to improve an application developer’s experience dramatically by using user provided labels to identify data structures and computations.