Event

The Gray Scott free HPC summer school is back at LAPP in summer 2026

The Gray Scott School is an advanced training program dedicated to High-Performance Computing (HPC), organised by LAPP and CC-FR. The fourth edition of the school will take place at LAPP from 22 June to 3 July 2026. Students will be able to choose from attending at LAPP in Annecy with the teachers, in many European cities on dedicated satellite sites, or remotely by following the courses live online.

The Gray Scott HPC Summer School

LAPP, as part of the ESCAPE Collaboration work programme, and in collaboration with the CC-FR Competence Centre, is organizing the third Gray Scott School from 22 June to 3 July 2026. This summer school on High Performance Computing, in a unique format and entirely free of charge, will be dedicated to programming and optimization on Heterogeneous Architectures.

The school covers the optimisation of computations on different types of hardware (CPU, GPU), presenting their respective characteristics, architectures and bottlenecks. It covers generic optimisation methods applicable to all types of hardware, as well as the various libraries, technologies and languages available to achieve the best possible performance. Ideally, the peak performance of the machine.

Through hands-on sessions, lectures, and regular technical webinars, the Gray Scott school equips participants with the skills needed to design, optimize, and scale high-performance applications.

Technologies covered

Profiling tools: 

  • Valgrind
  • Maqao
  • Perf
  • NSight
  • Malt
  • NumaProfIt

Languages: 

  • C++17
  • C++20
  • CUDA
  • Fortran
  • Python
  • Julia

Compilers: 

  • g++
  • clang++
  • nvc++
  • gfortran
  • nvfortran
  • dpc++

Libraries: 

  • Eve
  • NumPy
  • cunumerics
  • legate
  • Jax
  • Thrust
  • cuPy
  • pycuda
  • PyTorch
  • Kokkos,
  • OpenMP
  • TBB

How to attend the Gray Scott School 2026

This intensive or à la carte training course can be followed in three different ways:

  • Face-to-face at LAPP in Annecy with the teachers – including a BootStrap day (solving your programming/optimisation problems). Read this article to catch a glimpse of the students’ experience. Registrations here.
  • Distance learning at various satellite sites in Europe (more information here)
  • Distance learning, à la carte, via a live streaming on YouTube, with a discord server set up to foster interactions between students and teachers, only accessible to registered participants. 

Please bear in mind that for on-site registration, you need to make sure that your organisation allows your travel, and that you have made all necessary arrangements. The number of seats on every site is limited to the capacity of the hosting place.

Attend the school at LAPP in Annecy for a exclusice face-to-face experience with the teachers, and more opportunities to practice and exchange with experts.

Prepare for the school: the Gray Scott Thursdays webinars

Leading up to the summer program, we’re hosting a special series of 17 webinars called « Gray Scott Thursdays » focused on Unit tests, CPU & GPU Architecture, Computing precision, Memory allocation, CPU & GPU computing with Modern C++, Rust, Fortran, Python and Sycl, also EVE and CUDA…

These weekly sessions will:

  • Introduce key topics from the courses
  • Give you an update of the most known languages and libraries
  • Develop your skills and give you the chance to meet our incredible professors

Whether you’re looking to expand your expertise, solve a problem or connect with a vibrant community of learners, the Gray Scott School adds value for everyone.

Register here to get all the information and links for the next webinars.