The HiCREST Laboratory was well represented at the ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS 2026), hosted by Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Laboratory members Lorenzo Pichetti and Thomas Pasquali attended the event to share our latest research, engage in technical workshops, and connect with the global HPC community.
Paper Presentation: Trident
A major highlight of the conference was Lorenzo Pichetti’s presentation of our paper:
- “Communication-Avoiding SpGEMM via Trident Partitioning on Hierarchical GPU Interconnects“
- Authors: Lorenzo Pichetti, Julian Bellavita, Flavio Vella, and Giulia Guidi.
- Collaboration: This work is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the HiCREST Laboratory and the ALPS Research Lab at Cornell University (which previously included a research visit by Lorenzo to Cornell).
The paper addresses communication bottlenecks in sparse matrix multiplication (SpGEMM) on modern hierarchical GPU systems, offering scalable solutions for communication-bounded workloads.
Technical Deep-Dives and Workshops
Beyond the main technical tracks—which spanned topics from graph analytics to near-memory computing—our researchers actively participated in several focused workshops, such as:
- Arch4Health: Exploring real-world health applications in HPC, providing valuable context for sparse and communication-bounded workloads.
- NextAccel: Gaining insights into next-generation accelerators for HPC, Data, and AI architectures.
- HPC Benchmarking (Benchpark): Staying up-to-date on measuring the real-world performance of state-of-the-art HPC hardware.
A Warm Welcome in Northern Ireland
Beyond the rigorous technical program, Queen’s University Belfast provided a wonderful atmosphere for networking and cultural exchange. From the opening reception in the university’s historic hall to a guided walking tour of the city and a taste of traditional Irish hospitality, the conference offered a memorable blend of science and culture.
We extend our sincere thanks to Queen’s University Belfast for hosting an outstanding event, to our collaborators at Cornell’s ALPS Lab, and to the EuroHPC JU and the NET4EXA project for supporting our research in next-generation HPC interconnects and communication systems!
