Teleconference 2024-04-23
Attendees: Ken Moreland (ORNL)
Viskores / HPSF
We have completed the transition from VTK-m to Viskores. We have released the final version of VTK-m (although there can be patch versions) and the first version of Viskores. These versions are equivalent. There is a script to help convert code from VTK-m to Viskores.
Graphics designers for the HPSF have also provided us with a new logo: https://github.com/Viskores/viskores-logo/blob/main/viskores-logo-name-light-background.jpg
As we move away from VTK-m, we will need to transition our communications. Right now we are still using things like the VTK-m mailing list. We plan to move to the Viskores discussions in GitHub. Meeting notes and other things may change. More information will be forthcoming. (Sorry, this is not a big priority right now.)
There will be an HPSF Conference in Chicago May 5 - 8. Viskores will be part of that. I encourage VTK-m/Viskores TAC, developers, and users to attend. In the future, we can leverage the HPSF conference for user group meetings and/or hackathons if there is enough interest.
OASIS Deliverables
The following items are proposed for FY25 (which will end at the end of the fiscal year)
- Address requests for support, improvement, and new features by current and potential applications such as XGC and WarpX as well as other users of ParaView, VisIt, and Ascent.
- Contouring of polygons (such as for contouring slices) added and merged. (Can we get a highlight out of that?)
- Strengthen operation of VTK-m on Aurora.
- Improve documentation with automatic generation and web deployment.
- Integrate into High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) as Viskores.
- Improve integration between VTK-m/Viskores and VTK.
In the future, we will have to think about how to highlight VTK-m/Viskores. Our most visible deployment is usually through Ascent, but we don't want to take Ascent's thunder. I think Ascent gets its main funding through a different stream, so perhaps we could submit complementary highlights through SciDAC and NNSA.
Roundtable
Jeff: The VTK-m graph thing he made a while ago. Should that become part of Viskores proper? This contribution would be specifically graph hookup of Viskores components.
Pretty much everyone is moving to C++17. There is little reason to keep Viskores as C++14. Proposal: stick with C++14 through final release of VTK-m and initial release of Viskores. Next minor release of Viskores will be C++17. Ken will send poll out to TSG to get buy in.
Silvio tried building ParaView with SYCL with CMake settings that Abhishek gave him. The build works, but testing is forthcoming.
Nicole has mesh with structured cells and explicit coordinates. External faces is throwing exceptions about a bad cast and call. Ascent has a workaround, but Viskores should fix this issue.
Ascent getting weird ray culling issue.