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Minisymposium
MS1B - Improving the Sustainability of Research and Scientific Software
Replay
Session Chair
Description
In the rapidly evolving field of computational science, sustainability of research and scientific software has become a crucial element for future progress. The robustness and long-term viability of scientific computing software ecosystems is essential for the success of many scientific and technical organizations. A critical aspect of promoting sustainability is the evaluation and monitoring of project health within these ecosystems. This minisymposium will explore sustainability metrics' requirements and development, with speakers from the open-source software community, industry, and national laboratories sharing insights on theoretical models and practical experiences in software management. This event will also include a panel discussion, serving as a collaborative platform for exchanging best practices in software sustainability. It will address the challenges in software maintenance, the importance of effective stewardship strategies, and the crucial role of community involvement in ensuring the enduring success of scientific software. This event is more than a discussion—it's an active engagement in shaping the future of scientific software sustainability. It offers a platform for collaboration among various stakeholders to ensure the resilience and vitality of scientific software, crucial for progress in computational science and technology.
Presentations
Kitware's commitment to open source scientific software development has been pivotal since its inception in 1998. Central to its success is the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), which served as the cornerstone for the company's establishment. Over the years, Kitware has spearheaded numerous other open-source scientific software projects, including but not limited to ITK, ParaView, CMake, ADIOS, and 3D Slicer. In this presentation, we will share insights gleaned from the process of creating and sustaining scientific software. Additionally, he will discuss the Software Sustainability Matrix as a tool for evaluating the sustainability and project requirements of software packages. This matrix serves as a structured approach to gauge the longevity and adaptability of software projects, vital for their continued relevance and utility.Furthermore, the significance of automated software quality tools, exemplified by CDash, will be underscored. These tools have played a pivotal role in ensuring the success and reliability of various scientific software tools incubated and nurtured at Kitware over the past 26 years. By automating the assessment of software quality, it allows the development of high quality software and facilitates collaboration within the open-source community.
Sustaining open source projects over the long-term can be a challenge. Project leaders and contributors are busy people who don’t always have the time to focus on growing a community and maintaining their software. Using metrics is one way to help research and scientific software projects identify potential issues and identify areas where they can improve their project to make it more sustainable over the long-term. Being proactive about improving sustainability before it becomes a crisis can help make research and scientific software more sustainable and reliable for all of us. This talk will identify several sustainability metrics, discuss how to interpret those metrics, and provide ideas for improving sustainability issues identified using the metrics. The audience will walk away with a better understanding of how to use metrics to proactively improve the sustainability of their research and scientific software projects.
The 'Stewardship for Programming Systems and Tools' (S4PST) initiative represents one of the Software Stewardship Organizations (SSOs) selected by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Next Generation of Programming Systems and Tools (NGSST) project. S4PST is dedicated to sustaining and enhancing programming systems that support the evolution of next-generation high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, including GPUs and AI-accelerated hardware. Our mission extends to the seamless integration of these systems with emerging AI technologies to further scientific research. Through our collaboration with the collective SSOs in NGSST, we aim not only to steward but also to advance the foundational software developed during the DOE’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP). This project culminated in the deployment of the inaugural infrastructure (hardware, software, libraries, etc. ) exascale systems, significantly impacting scientific research. During our presentation, we will highlight the several programming system products in our portfolio and their plans to advance these programming systems for HPC. We are committed to fostering a collaborative environment that unites developers, end-users, vendors, and DOE supercomputing facilities. Our community-centric model strives to cultivate a proactive and responsive software ecosystem, tailored to meet the diverse computational demands inherent in the DOE’s scientific endeavors.
The minisymposium will conclude with a panel discussion moderated by the organizer and featuring the invited speakers. The panel will be a conversation addressing audience questions related to training and education strategies for overcoming the lifecycle challenges of research software. The discussion will also cover questions about experiences with best practices and metrics used to evaluate software sustainability and the training approaches adopted to understand and apply these metrics effectively.