CUDA 4 Dummies

Unlock GPU power with CUDA! Learn how to extend C/C++/Fortran code to run thousands of GPU cores in parallel and accelerate scientific computing. This beginner-friendly course offers a step-by-step introduction to CUDA programming, core design principles, and practical GPU workflows. No prior GPU experience needed – just bring your curiosity and a willingness to parallelize!

CUDA is the standard API for code development targeting NVIDIA GPUs and a number of impressive examples have already been given in diverse areas from particle physics to computational biology. CUDA allows simple extensions of standard C/C++/Fortran code with GPU-specific functions. In this way thousands of cores available on the GPU can be leveraged to work in parallel and thus carry out significant fractions of the computational workload on the device rather than the CPU. There is also a vast set of auxiliary tools available to the developer including libraries, code templates, building blocks, analysis tools, developmental frameworks, and in general a vivid community making up the CUDA Developer Zone. It is often for this multifaceted support environment that the interested beginner is feeling overwhelmed and unsettled about which particular first steps should best be taken to gain a straightforward introduction into the subject. For exactly this reason the present course is offering a systematic step-by-step introduction into GPU computing from the perspective of the newcomer. Basic design principles will be established, central programming techniques acquired and a number of state-of-the-art workflows examined that efficiently employ the GPU and are frequently used in scientific computing.

This course provides lectures, demos, and hands-on labs.

Agenda & Content

For a detailed timetable and additional information, please see Agenda & Content in the left menu.

Content level

Content level: Basic = 0:00h (0%) + Intermediate = 13:00h (100%) + Advanced = 0:00h (0%)

Target audience, eligibility & prices

Everyone is welcome who wants to learn CUDA programming, including students, researchers, and professionals from academia, industry, and public administration.

This course is open and free of charge for participants from academia, industry, and public administration from EU and/or EuroHPC JU member countries.

Entry level & prerequisites

Basic/beginner – no prior CUDA knowledge is required.

Being able to program in C/C++.

Know how to work on the Linux command line.

We welcome a basic scientific mindset, curiosity, a keen interest in challenging technical innovations, and the appreciation of outside-the-box thinking.

Course format

This course will be delivered as a LIVE ONLINE COURSE (using Zoom).

Hands-on labs

All participants will get a temporary user account on one of the ASC systems to do the hands-on labs.

Accepted participants will be contacted a few days before the course and asked to do a short pre-assignment that has to be completed before the course starts.

Lecturers

Siegfried Höfinger (lecturer, ASC Research Center, TU Wien)
Dr. Siegfried Höfinger is a High-Performance Computing (HPC) specialist and instructor focusing on efficient use of Austria's leading supercomputing infrastructure. He teaches researchers and practitioners how to run and optimize scientific applications on the large-scale ASC clusters, with a strong emphasis on practical hands-on workflows and energy aware HPC usage. Siegfried focuses on GPU programming and he teaches how to offload computationally intensive kernels from CPUs to NVIDIA GPUs, exploit massive thread-level parallelism, and use CUDA libraries like cuBLAS and cuSOLVER to speed up linear algebra and other numeric routines.

Atul Singh (teaching assistant, ASC Research Center, TU Wien)
​Dr. Atul Singh is currently working as an engineer in the software team at Austrian Scientific Computing ASC, TU Wien. He holds a PhD as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow from the University of Southampton, UK, in engineering design optimization, and has previously worked as an HPC specialist at the University of Nottingham, UK. During his MSc studies at the University of Rostock, Germany, he completed internships at several academic and industrial institutions, including the Chair of Aero Engine Design at BTU Cottbus, Germany, CINECA Supercomputing Center as a PRACE Summer of HPC 2018 participant in Bologna, Italy, and Scania in Södertälje, Sweden, where he worked on exhaust aftertreatment systems. This centers his expertise in engineering optimization, artificial intelligence, computational fluid dynamics, and simulations to name a few.

Ivan Vialov (teaching assistant, ASC Research Center, TU Wien)

Language

English

Date, time, and location

27.–28.10.2026, 09:00 – 17:00 (CET), LIVE ONLINE COURSE (Zoom)

registration

Registration is required, the registration form can be found on top of this page in the menu on the left.

Please register with your official institutional email address to prove your affiliation.

You will get an automatic confirmation by email (subject starting with "[Indico] Registration"), please check your Spam/Junk folders.

Following your successful registration, you will receive further information a few days before the course.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at training@asc.ac.at if you have any questions.

Waitinglist

After the number of registrations has reached its maximum or the registration form has been closed, you may want to send us an email (training@asc.ac.at) stating that you are interested to be put on the waiting list (vacancies may occur due to cancelations, etc.).

To be able to do the hands-on labs on the ASC systems please provide your full international mobile-phone number for the two-factor authentication required to login to the ASC systems.

Modification, withdrawal & no-show policy

Your registration is binding. Please only register for the course if you are really going to attend.

You can update your registration data or withdraw your registration anytime before the registration form has been closed via the link "Manage my registration" which you can find at the bottom of your automatic email confirmation (subject starting with "[Indico] Registration").

Alternatively, or after the registration form has been closed, please inform us about your cancelation or any change in your registration data (especially your mobile-phone number) via email (training@asc.ac.at).

No-show policy: If you do not cancel and do not show up at the course you will be blacklisted and excluded from future training events.

Organizers

This course is organized by Austrian Scientific Computing ASC (aka ASC Research Center, TU Wien).

Acknowledgements

This course is partially funded by the EuroCC 3 project.

EuroCC 3 has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under Grant Agreement No. 101306701. The JU receives support from the European Union‘s Digital Europe Programme and Germany, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye, and Kosovo.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. Neither the European Union nor the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking can be held responsible for them.

National co-funding for Austria was granted by Austrian Scientific Computing (ASC).