POSE: Phase I: Toward a Task-Parallel Programming Ecosystem for Modern Scientific Computing

为任务并行编程而设计的开源软件系统已经成为机器学习和量子计算等广泛现代科学计算应用的核心。虽然几十年的研究已经产生了许多开源的任务并行编程系统，但它们中的大多数都是由少数几个开发人员领导的，它们的影响不会长期持续下去。为了克服这一挑战，该项目提出了界定活动范围的建议，以建立一条通往长期可持续生态系统的路线，以便进行任务并行规划。这些活动建立在开源软件Taskflow之上，Taskflow是一个高性能的任务并行系统，可以简化复杂的科学计算应用程序的构建。该项目首先发现了一个基于Taskflow、量子计算、电路设计自动化和多媒体这三个日益增长的应用程序的生态系统。发现工作包括设计展示软件产品和组织研讨会，以追求Taskflow的最佳生态系统。然后，该项目设计了一系列开发人员培训计划，以吸引潜在的内容贡献者，他们可以帮助以社区驱动的方式开发和维护Taskflow。最后，该项目建立了一个透明和公开可见的治理模型，以规范Taskflow针对各种要素的决策过程，包括技术贡献、合作伙伴关系和安全政策。该项目为Taskflow过渡到强大和可持续的系统资产奠定了基础，使科学计算社区能够使用可扩展的基于任务的方法快速响应新出现的并行性。该项目中的许多范围界定活动可以增强对Taskflow的商业采用的信心，并加强其与其他开放源码科学计算项目的伙伴关系，以进一步扩大其影响和增强可持续性。此外，该项目产生的成果可用于课堂更新现有的学习材料，用于高性能计算和软件实践，吸引不同群体的学生参与开源开发。该项目的网站可在https://taskflow.github.io/上找到，其中包含最新的新闻、源代码、分步学习材料和基准。作者致力于长期开发和维护该项目。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Open-source software systems designed for task-parallel programming have become central to a wide range of modern scientific computing applications, such as machine learning and quantum computing. While decades of research has yielded many open-source task-parallel programming systems, most of them are led by a handful of developers and their impacts do not sustain in the long run. To overcome this challenge, this project proposes scoping activities to establish a route to a long-term sustainable ecosystem for task-parallel programming. These activities build atop the open-source software, Taskflow, a high-performance task-parallel system to streamline the building of complex scientific computing applications.This project starts by discovering an ecosystem based on three increasing applications of Taskflow, quantum computing, circuit design automation, and multimedia. The discovery effort consists of designing showcase software products and organizing workshops to pursue the optimal ecosystem for Taskflow. Then, the project designs a series of developer training programs to engage potential content contributors who can help develop and maintain Taskflow in a community-driven fashion. Finally, the project establishes a transparent and publicly visible governance model to formalize the decision-making process of Taskflow for various elements, including technical contributions, partnership, and security policies. This project lays the foundation for Taskflow to transition to a robust and sustainable system asset for the scientific computing community to quickly respond to emerging parallelism using scalable task-based approaches. Many scoping activities in this project can instill confidence in commercial adoption of Taskflow and grow its partnership with other open-source scientific computing projects to further broaden its impact and enhance sustainability. Also, results produced in this project can be used in classrooms to renovate existing learning materials for high-performance computing and software practice, engaging a diverse group of students in open-source development.The project website is available at https://taskflow.github.io/ which contains the latest news, source code, step-by-step learning materials, and benchmarks. The authors are committed to developing and maintaining the project in the long term.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.