[Discuss-gnuradio] Heterogeneous Computing Workgroup at GRCon

[Martin Braun]

Hi all,

here's a quick reminder that we'll have a heterogeneous computing
workgroup at GRCon this year. The workgroup will be active on Friday,
8:45-12:15, in Sierra A (there'll be maps of the venue when you get
there). Here's the original abstract:

```
   In this breakout session, we intend to revisit the problem of
implementing heterogeneous computing as a first-class citizen of GNU
Radio, a topic that has kept boiling up throughout the years. Since the
inception of GNU Radio, it has been ported to various platforms, and
RFNoC support was added via gr-ettus using the new GRC block-domain concept.

    However, all those efforts are very platform-dependent, and it is
still not clear how one would write blocks that straddle multiple
different processing domains, such as GPUs, FPGAs, dedicated DSPs, as
well as GPPs. We attempt to revive this discussion at GRCon and come up
with a plan on how to proceed to make heterogeneous computing something
that works generically for various underlying hardware platforms.

    This breakout session will be very technical. We will be analysing
sections of the GNU Radio runtime to identify where we need to add hooks
or provide additional APIs and/or functionalities.

    We invite all experts on processing and computer architectures, as
well as anyone who's interested in improving the GNU Radio runtime in
this domain to participate in this breakout session.
```

I would like to add a couple of comments to this for people who are
planning to attend:

- Like mentioned above, this will be a very technical workgroup. A
strong familiarity with GNU Radio will be useful to traverse the
conversations, or prior experience with heterogeneous computing, or
comparable technical experience.

- If you want to attend, please try and familiarize yourself with the
buffer architecture in GNU Radio, which are the foundation of how we
pass data from one block to another.

- One action item for this group will be the creating a list of
architectures that we want to target (FPGAs? GPUs? DSPs? etc.)

- The intention of this working group is to identify people who are
willing to commit time and energy to improving the state of
heterogeneous computing in GNU Radio. Consider this a first meeting, not
something that in itself is complete.

I'm looking forward to seeing you in this workgroup!

Cheers,
Martin