Scientific applications are increasingly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to advance science. There are specialized hardware accelerators designed and built to run AI applications efficiently. With a wide diversity in the hardware architectures and software stacks of these systems, it is challenging to understand the differences between these accelerators, their capabilities, programming approaches, and how they perform, particularly for scientific applications.
In this tutorial, we will cover an overview of the AI accelerators landscape focusing on Cerebras, SambaNova, and Groq along with architectural features and details of their software stacks. We will have hands-on exercises to help attendees understand how to program these systems by learning how to refactor codes, compile, run and evaluate the models on these systems. The tutorial will provide the attendees with an understanding of the key capabilities of these AI accelerators and their performance implications for scientific applications.
| Date | 26 January 2026 |
|---|---|
| Time | 9:30 AM - 12.30 PM local time |
Murali Emani (ANL), Leighton Wilson (Cerebras), Petro Jr Milan/Tim Clark (SambaNova),
| Time (EST) | Topic/Speaker |
|---|---|
| 9:30 AM - 9:45 AM | Welcome and Overview of the ALCF AI Testbed (Murali) Slides |
| 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM | Cerebras (Leighton) Slides |
| 10:45 AM - 11:15 AM | Coffee Break |
| 11.15 AM - 12:00 PM | SambaNova (Tim) Slides |
| 12:00 PM - 12:20 PM | Groq (Murali) |
| 12.20 PM - 12:30 PM | Q&A and Conclusion (Murali) |
To gain access to AI Testbeds at ALCF apply for Director’s Discretionary Allocation Program that provides “start up” awards to researchers working to achieve computational readiness for for a major allocation award.
- Request an ALCF Computer User Account if you do not currently have one
- If you have an ALCF Account that is currently inactive, submit an account reactivation request*.
- If you have an active ALCF account, click Join Project to submit a membership request to your project, if approved.
- Github Tutorial Repository
- Overview of AI Testbeds at ALCF
- ALCF AI Testbed Documentation
- Director’s Discretionary Allocation Program
Contributors: Murali Emani, Varuni Sastry
This research used resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357.