Julia Update: Adoption Keeps Climbing; Is It a Python Challenger?

By John Russell

January 13, 2021

The rapid adoption of Julia, the open source, high level programing language with roots at MIT, shows no sign of slowing according to data from Julialang.org. In 2020, the number of downloads jumped 87 percent to more than 24 million (2020 v. 2019) and the number of available packages rose 73 percent to roughly 4800. Last year (2019 v. 2018) the number of downloads jumped 77 percent. In the most recent TIOBE index, Julia jumped from #47 to #23 and TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen said Julia is the top candidate to jump into the top 20 (used languages) next year.

Julia is hot.

One prominent Julia user, Rick Stevens, associate director of Argonne National Laboratory, told HPCwire, “I saw the 87 percent increase and think it is wonderful to see Julia growing. I think that Julia has great potential to replace C/C++/Python (and of course Fortran) in scientific and technical computing as it matures. The low level performance is excellent. It will be important for it to be adopted as a first-class target language by CPU/GPU vendors.”

Launched roughly in the 2012 timeframe by four computer scientists including Alan Edelman of MIT, the number of Julia users has more than doubled in the past three years. Julia was intended to provide a powerful but easier-to-use programming language for scientific computing. Julia is a dynamic language and the tension between the high performance delivered by so-called static programming languages and the lesser performance delivered by high-level dynamic programming languages, which emphasize abstraction, speed of development, and portability, hasn’t gone away.

Edelman, who won the 2019 IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award, in part for his work on Julia, argued in his SC19 Fernbach talk that convenience with sufficient performance is winning out in the programming wars. Moreover, the rise of heterogeneous computing and the complications it presents to programmers, he said, has increased the tilt away from static programming towards dynamic languages. Here’s a brief snippet from his SC2019 talk:

“When you’re writing various algorithms, you don’t necessarily want to think about whether you’re on a GPU, or whether you’re on a distributed computer. You don’t necessarily want to think about how you’ve implemented the specific data structure. What you want to do is talk about what you want to compute, not how you want to compute it, right? That is the big problem, to get people to talk about what you want to compute, and not how you want to compute it. Because if you put in your software, how you’re going to compute it, and if your software is filled with that muck, I promise you, nobody’s ever going to change it. No one’s going to innovate on it. When the person who wrote it is no longer in the project, no one’s ever going to touch it.

“[S]ome of the reasons why Julia is working very well is because we have particularly well-designed abstractions. We have something called multiple dispatch and we have a very careful balance between the static and dynamic. It interfaces with LLVM. It plays nicely with Python. We also have had lots of people take legacy codes in MPI, and plug them into Julia – you don’t get all the benefits, but what you do have, which might be the most important benefit, is other people can now run your code once it’s inside of Julia. So it’s much easier for other people. You can actually give your old code new life when you plug it into a higher level language.”

During his talk, Edelman presented an example in which a group of researchers decided to scrap their legacy climate code in Fortran and write it from scratch in Julia. There was some discussion around performance tradeoffs they might encounter in the move to a high level programming language. The group was willing to accept a 3x slowdown for the flexibility of the language. Instead, said Edelman, the switch produced 3x speedup. (See HPCwire coverage of Edelman’s talk, Julia Programming’s Dramatic Rise in HPC and Elsewhere)

The Julia organization hasn’t been shy about tackling the perceived performance shortcomings of dynamic versus static languages. Here’s an excerpt from Julia’s introductory documentation on performance and differentiation from other dynamic languages:

“Scientific computing has traditionally required the highest performance, yet domain experts have largely moved to slower dynamic languages for daily work. We believe there are many good reasons to prefer dynamic languages for these applications, and we do not expect their use to diminish. Fortunately, modern language design and compiler techniques make it possible to mostly eliminate the performance trade-off and provide a single environment productive enough for prototyping and efficient enough for deploying performance-intensive applications. The Julia programming language fills this role: it is a flexible dynamic language, appropriate for scientific and numerical computing, with performance comparable to traditional statically-typed languages.

“Because Julia’s compiler is different from the interpreters used for languages like Python or R, you may find that Julia’s performance is unintuitive at first. If you find that something is slow, we highly recommend reading through the Performance Tips section before trying anything else. Once you understand how Julia works, it’s easy to write code that’s nearly as fast as C.

“Julia features optional typing, multiple dispatch, and good performance, achieved using type inference and just-in-time (JIT) compilation, implemented using LLVM. It is multi-paradigm, combining features of imperative, functional, and object-oriented programming. Julia provides ease and expressiveness for high-level numerical computing, in the same way as languages such as R, MATLAB, and Python, but also supports general programming. To achieve this, Julia builds upon the lineage of mathematical programming languages, but also borrows much from popular dynamic languages, including LispPerlPythonLua, and Ruby.

“The most significant departures of Julia from typical dynamic languages are:

  • The core language imposes very little; Julia Base and the standard library are written in Julia itself, including primitive operations like integer arithmetic
  • A rich language of types for constructing and describing objects, that can also optionally be used to make type declarations
  • The ability to define function behavior across many combinations of argument types via multiple dispatch
  • Automatic generation of efficient, specialized code for different argument types
  • Good performance, approaching that of statically-compiled languages like C”

A Julia user survey conducted last June provides a snapshot of the Julia user community and many of its feature preference and practices. It’s based on 2,565 interviews. Currently most users (60%) work in academia but there is a growing push to expand Julia in industry. Within industry, the biggest user segments are software/IT professionals (12%) and engineering (11%).

Interestingly, only about half of the Julia currently use hardware accelerators now, although that number is growing. Julia is also not widely used in the cloud. Currently Julia programs are run mostly on local clusters.

Performance, ease-of-use, and the open source nature of Julia were top choices for popular technical features. No surprise, the lack of licensing fees was the top non-tech feature. Among top technical challenges cited were slow compile times and the relative immaturity of packages. Juno and VS Code with Julia plug-in were top rates editors for 2020.

At JuliaCon held (virtually) in late July, one particularly active BOF tackled efforts to have industry share code with the Julia community. Greater involvement of industry seems generally seems to be on Julia’s agenda and represents another step towards building its popularity. There’s a recap of JuliaCon posted on the Julia website.

It will be interesting to monitor Julia’s traction going forward; making it into the top 20 of the TIOBE Index next year would be a strong indicator.

Slides source: Julia June 2020 survey: https://julialang.org/assets/2020-julia-user-developer-survey.pdf

2020 stats source: Julia newsletter, https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2021/01/newsletter-january/

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire