Title: xSDK Foundations: Toward an Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit,
Abstract: Extreme-scale computational science increasingly demands multiscale and
multiphysics formulations. Combining software developed by independent groups
is imperative: no single team has resources for all predictive science and
decision support capabilities. Scientific libraries provide high-quality,
reusable software components for constructing applications with improved
robustness and portability. However, without coordination, many libraries
cannot be easily composed. Namespace collisions, inconsistent arguments, lack
of third-party software versioning, and additional difficulties make
composition costly.
The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) defines
community policies to improve code quality and compatibility across
independently developed packages (hypre, PETSc, SuperLU, Trilinos, and
Alquimia) and provides a foundation for addressing broader issues in software
interoperability, performance portability, and sustainability. The xSDK
provides turnkey installation of member software and seamless combination of
aggregate capabilities, and it marks first steps toward extreme-scale
scientific software ecosystems from which future applications can be composed
rapidly with assured quality and scalability.