xSDK Foundations: Toward an Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit

TL;DR

The paper introduces the xSDK, a framework that enhances interoperability, compatibility, and scalability of scientific software libraries for extreme-scale computational science, enabling easier composition and deployment of complex applications.

Contribution

It establishes community policies for software compatibility and provides a foundation for building scalable, interoperable scientific software ecosystems at extreme scales.

Findings

Successful integration of multiple scientific libraries

Turnkey installation simplifies software deployment

Improved code compatibility and scalability

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.