2022-04-28 LDCG SC Meeting Agenda/Minutes

 Agenda

• Previous meeting minutes: 2022-03-24 LDCG SC Meeting Agenda/Minutes
• LDCG proposals process (Leonardo Garcia)
• Flang (Shun Kamatsuka, Gen Shimada)
• OpenBMC proposal (if time permits) (Leonardo Garcia)
• LDCG SC Chair (Joakim Bech)
• AOB

Documents

• Recording of the meeting: https://linaro-org.zoom.us/rec/share/eveFJPBQ6T_SjIDxGQTUKzYDVELSASoeFHqqTM7SzDlidIlEpS_WsZrlMQGofZKY.LFtij4FwyyRypRXt (passcode: ^ch5j9d4)

Action Items

• Jon Masters, talk to his OpenBMC people.

Minutes

• LDCG proposals process
  
  • LDCG shared folder available. If you haven't receive an e-mail with the access information, please, let Leonardo Garcia know.
    • It will not substitute this Confluence space.
    • It will just be a central repository for the LDCG files.
  • LDCG proposals process:
    • Jonathan: Issue accessing Google docs, should make sure it's accessible from confluence.
    • Leonardo Garcia will attach PDF versions of the documents to Confluence.

PDF version in Confluence:

.

• Flang (Shun Kamatsuka, Gen Shimada)
  • Kamatsuka-san gave an introduction to Flang.
  • Shimada-san, described how Fortran is used and why it is being revived.
    • Article from May 5th is used by Nvidia, Arm, IBM, AMD, DoE and NASA to give a few examples. Several updates since 2000 (version?).
    • Claims to have better performance than other popular programming languages (Java given as an example).
    • Natively parallel, i.e., single core or multicore, almost no difference in coding paradigm.
    • They have a big library. Usage is typically computing, science and engineering. For example, weather prediction, statistics, finance etc.
    • Main programming language in High Performance Computing (HPC).
    • Users spread across the world, but the United State have the most companies using it. There are many legacy systems that still are using Fortran.
    • Two open source compilers, gfortran and Flang. Gravity towards Flang/LLVM. Good license model for companies (Apache License 2.0).
    • Linaro is already doing Fortran work in toolchain, ... OpenBLAS.
    • 
  • Joey Ye: What is Fujitsu's contribution and what areas?
  • Kamatsuka-san: Current haven't contribute, but plan to do so in the near future. Features related to optimization.
  • Joey Ye: Uses classic Flang, but looking forward to the new Flang. Have a few engineers working on it (via OpenAMP/MP?). 
  • Joakim: Our there any outstanding issue that needs be address.
  • Leonardo: Aarch64 support not complete.
• OpenBMC proposal (Leonardo Garcia)
  • Leonardo
    • Has been trying to look into all information we've received, this is a summary of my findings.
    • There is momentum in OpenBMC.
    • Although Arm is a key player, the involvement from the Arm community is limited.
    • Make OpenBMC compliant with Arm's SBMR specification.
    • Create certification tests.
    • Adding Root of Trust into OpenBMC. Linaro is already doing work in this area (not OpenBMC).
    • Challenges:
      • Staffing
      • Limited experience with OpenBMC.
      • Security could be an area. Linaro has the experience in general, but not directly for OpenBMC.
  • Tom: What would you be asking the members in terms of people? I.e., how many engineers?
  • Leonardo: Not well defined, but releases, probably one engineer. Linaro don't have enough engineers to assign, so we would need help from members as well.
  • Tom: Probably need a plan.
  • Andrew: Been discussed in the past. Seeing it "done" is commercially sufficient. Not confident that you get enough funding or engineers to work with it.
  • Jon: Think it would be interesting to Google. Need to take it back to discuss. The list looks pretty good and I'm quite enthusiastic about it.
  • Andrew: Agree, but key factor is getting OEM's involved.
  • Jon: How open are we to involve non-Linaro members?
  • Leonardo: Project membership?
  • Tim: Not given, but it could be a possibility.

PDF version in Confluence:

• LDCG SC Chair
  • When Elsie left, Joakim temporarily took over as the LDCG SC Chair while we were hiring a replacement for Elsie.
  • Leonardo joined a couple of months ago and is now up to speed on LDCG topics, so Joakim is out and from now on and Leonardo becomes the new LDCG SC Chair.
• AOB
  • Jonathan: NUMA, kernel scheduler, tuneables, they have been the same for 20 years, everyone agrees that it needs updating. See bullet "2" here → Linaro Open Discussions. Any help testing this would be appreciated.
    
    • Jon M: What is the deciding factor to move jobs?