Speaker: Dr. Filippo Mantovani, Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Abstract:
The European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a project dedicated to developing a general-purpose processor and an accelerator, alongside the necessary software layers for their integration into the High Performance Computing (HPC) ecosystem. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is contributing to the development of a RISC-V-based accelerator targeted at HPC applications, leveraging the RISC-V vector extension. This talk aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the EPI project, an introduction to RISC-V, and insights into vector supercomputing. Special emphasis will be placed on the RISC-V vector extensions (RVV), with a particular focus on implementations utilizing large vectors. Participants will gain an understanding of how RVV compares with other vector architectures and explore a design approach that utilizes vectors up to 16-kbit wide. Ultimately, the talk aims to present the methodologies, tools, and libraries available for vectorization, while addressing the accompanying challenges and limitations.

Short bio:
Filippo Mantovani is an established researcher responsible for the Mobile and embedded-based HPC group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He graduated in mathematics and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Ferrara, Italy. He has been a scientific associate at the DESY laboratory in Zeuthen, Germany, and the University of Regensburg, Germany, spending most of his scientific career in computational physics and high-performance computing. He brought up and evaluated large high-performance computing systems, contributing to the Janus, QPACE and Mont-Blanc projects. Furthermore, he is involved in the FPGA prototyping tasks of RISC-V-based accelerators within the European Processor Initiative (EPI). Also, he is currently leading the collaboration between BSC and industrial group Etxe-tar for optimizing high-throughput manufacturing systems.