Code Green Jam: Pioneering Energy-Efficient HPC at UIC

Last week, something special happened at the University of Illinois Chicago, and it wasn’t your typical hackathon.

The Code Green Jam brought together students with varying levels of programming experience for an exciting, hands-on experience focused on optimizing parallelized code for energy efficiency. It was a chance to learn, experiment, and push the boundaries of high-performance computing (HPC) while emphasizing sustainability.

No final answers. Just code and GPUs.

Instead of traditional lectures or predefined outcomes, participants dove straight into the action. They worked with a stack of CUDA C++ example codes and the power profiling tools developed through my own PhD research. These tools allowed them to measure power draw in real-time while running their code on the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Delta system at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

The challenge? Optimize the parallel code to run faster and greener. Participants iterated through various steps—re-writing parallel routines, debugging, compiling, and measuring power consumption-until they found solutions that made both performance and energy consumption more efficient. There were wins, lessons learned, and collaboration at every step. And most importantly, real progress was made in understanding how energy-aware programming can drive the future of computing.

Special Thanks to Our Supporters

A huge thank you to the amazing team that made Code Green Jam a success:

• Yashi Shandilya, the student President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) @ UIC, provided marketing, organized space and food, and shared essential insights for organizing student events.

• The collaboration between Matthew T. Dearing, an energy-efficiency expert, and the ACM UIC chapter was crucial to making the event a success. Along with Amira Kefi, Fidha Nazreen K M, and myself, we had an incredible time experimenting with CUDA C++ to optimize code for energy efficiency using GPUs on the Delta system.

  
  

What’s Next?

The Code Green Jam was just the beginning! We’re already planning to turn it into a hackathon series to keep building energy-efficient, GPU-powered workflows and continue growing our community.

This wasn’t just a coding event-it was a collective learning jam where participants collaborated, learned, and grew together. We are excited about how energy-efficient computing will shape the future of technology.

Want to stay in the loop for future events? Join Chicago Women in HPC and help shape the next generation of sustainable technology!

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