HPCW - Call for Papers

HPCW is a workshop focusing on containerization, virtualization, and other methods to implement user-defined, bring-your-own, or isolated software environments. Submissions will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be published in LNCS, Springer.

Overview

The ongoing revolution enabled via containerization, virtualization, and new orchestration models has dramatically changed how applications and services are delivered and managed across the computing industry. This revolution has established a new ecosystem of tools and techniques with new, flexible and agile approaches, and continues to gain traction in the HPC community. In addition to HPC-optimized container runtimes, technologies like Kubernetes create a new set of opportunities and challenges. While adoption is growing, questions regarding best practices, foundational concepts, tools, and standards remain.

Our goal is to promote the adoption of these tools and introspect the impact of this new ecosystem on HPC use cases. This workshop serves as a key venue for presenting late-breaking research, sharing experiences and best practices, and fostering collaboration in this field. Our 12th workshop iteration will continue to emphasize real-world experiences and challenges in adopting and optimizing these new approaches for HPC.

Scope

The scope of this workshop is to better understand and improve paradigms around containerization, virtualization, and orchestration for HPC use cases. The most well-known approaches are containers and virtualization, but anything to further these goals is welcome.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Hybrid HPC/AI deployments (e.g., Slurm ↔ Kubernetes interop; DRA/Device Plugins; Enroot/Singularity)
  • Orchestrating model serving workflows
  • Monitoring performance across distributed workloads
  • Integrating tools to automate the full AI lifecycle with built-in security and compliance
  • Cross‑site container mobility & federation (EuroHPC, national labs, cloud)
  • Secure and performant runtimes for HPC (isolation, I/O, GPU/MIG, RDMA)
  • Workflow orchestration (Nextflow, Argo, Snakemake, CWL); provenance & automation
  • Teaching containerized HPC and reproducibility (curricula, labs, MOOC content)
  • Benchmarking containerized HPC/AI workloads; performance portability
  • FAIR containers and artifact sharing for reproducible research
  • Perspectives on container outreach - convincing native application users/devs to make the jump

Workshop Format

We worked continuously to improve the HPCW program based on feedback from the community. We have made adjustments to the format for HPCW'26 to include more dynamic and engaging content, in addition to the traditional full paper presentations. The content of technical sessions will be driven by the mix of accepted submissions curated by the program committee members. We will offer two submission tracks: one for full paper submissions and one for lightning talks. HPCW'26 is going to be a full-day workshop.

Full paper submissions will receive at least 3 peer reviews in the ISC26 submission system on the basis of scientific validity, impact on the field, reproducibility, and opportunity for interactive discussion at the workshop. The program committee will discuss the submissions and their reviews over a conference call moderated by the program chairs; final proceedings will be selected by majority vote of the committee. Accepted paper submissions will be published by the ISC proceedings publisher: LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), Springer. Artifacts for reproducibility (digital archives of code, README instructions, images, etc.) will be a significant factor in paper acceptance into the workshop. Further details are available in the "Submission procedure" section below.

For lightning talks, participants can submit an abstract and an extended abstract that will be reviewed by the program committee. These are excluded from publication. Our lightning talk track is meant to showcase demos, exploratory and late-breaking work, pain-points or shortcomings in current container/virtualization technologies, and projects that may not be fleshed out enough to warrant a paper submission. We especially encourage lightning talk submissions from early-career participants and people who are relatively new to the world of containers/virtualization.

One author of all accepted papers and presentations must present in person and register for the ISC 'Workshop Pass'. Information on travel, visas, accommodation, and attractions in Hamburg is available on the ISC 2026 website.

Program Committee Members

  • Abdulrahman Azab (chair) — Sigma2 AS (Norway)
  • Francieli Boito — University of Bordeaux, Inria (France)
  • David Brayford — Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Germany)
  • Richard S. Canon — Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, NERSC (United States of America)
  • Holger Gantikow (chair) - Eviden (Germany)
  • Hisham Kholidy — Northern Illinois University (USA)
  • Christian Kniep (chair) — QNIB Solutions, MemVerge Inc (Germany)
  • Leon Kos — University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
  • Barbara Krašovec (chair) — Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)
  • Alfio Lazzaro (chair) — HPE EMEA Research Lab (Switzerland)
  • Alberto Madonna — Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) (Switzerland)
  • Tiziano Müller — HPE EMEA Research Lab (Switzerland)
  • Arnab Paul — BITS Pilani, Goa Campus (India)
  • Alja Prah — Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)
  • Jonathan Sparks — HPE (United States of America)
  • Thomas Thaulow Stöcklin — Sigma2 AS (Norway)
  • Tim Wickberg — SchedMD LLC (United States of America)
  • Andrew Younge — Sandia National Laboratories (United States of America)

Important Dates

  • Submission opens: December 12th, 2025
  • Submission closes: March 13th, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: April 10th, 2026
  • Camera Ready Submission: May 19th, 2026
  • Workshop date: June 26th, 2026

Note: Items are due at 23:59 “anywhere on Earth” on the specified date. Specifically, this is 23:59 IDLW, i.e., UTC–12:00.

Submit your contributions here: linklings.net/conferences/isc_hpc (login required).

Submission Procedure

Paper submissions must use a single-column LNCS Springer layout. Upload your paper in PDF format, between 6 and 12 pages (including bibliography and appendices, with an allowance of up to two additional pages for addressing reviewer comments).

Authors should consult Springer’s Instructions for Authors of Proceedings and use either the LaTeX or the Word templates provided on Springer’s authors’ page for the preparation of their papers.

For lightning talks (excluded from publication), participants can submit an abstract and an extended abstract (maximum 1 single-column page).

We enthusiastically welcome original, high-quality submissions within the scope above. These may describe complete studies; work-in-progress research; position papers on controversial, emerging, or hot topics; state of the practice; or any other manuscript the authors believe should be included in the HPCW program. We encourage submissions from academia, industry, government, and/or any other type of institution.

Each manuscript will be assessed using peer review by program committee members (or outside reviewers, if needed) based on scientific validity, impact on the field, reproducibility, inclusivity, and opportunity for useful and lively discussion at the workshop. Review will be single-blind; i.e., reviewers will know authors’ identities, but not vice versa. Authors should not anonymize their manuscripts. Each manuscript submission can expect to have at least 3 reviews.

The use of artificial intelligence AI–generated text in an article shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text shall have a citation to the AI system used to generate the text. Utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) is permissible as a general-purpose writing assistance tool. Authors are expected to acknowledge their complete accountability for the contents of their papers, including content generated by LLMs that could be interpreted as plagiarism or scientific misconduct (e.g., fabrication of facts). LLMs are not eligible for authorship.

Submissions should be as transparent as possible regarding all methods. Submissions are also expected to provide reproducibility artifacts such as reproduction instructions, source code, build recipes, and/or container images. These should be included as part of the submission in the form of appendices.

The program committee will discuss the submissions and their reviews and select the program over a video conference meeting. Submissions will be assessed as-is, with no expectation of substantive revision after peer review, though some submissions may be accepted conditional on specified changes ("shepherded").

Rejected paper submissions could be offered the possibility to present as a talk, at the discretion of the program committee.

Reproducibility Plan

Paper submissions are required to provide artifact descriptions as submission appendices, if applicable. Artifacts such as reproduction instructions, source code, build recipes, and/or container images would all be appropriate and considered during peer review. In case of acceptance, authors are given the option to provide artifact evaluations, if applicable.

Diversity and Inclusivity

Similarly to the broader field of HPC, the organizers recognize concerns with diversity and inclusion for HPCW. We continuously work to improve diversity and inclusion at leadership, program committee, and participation levels. We plan early and often targeted recruiting and advice-seeking with diversity organizations (e.g., WHPC). HPCW states explicit inclusion goals in the workshop CFP, includes an optional inclusion plan in paper submission system, and specially considers any submitted inclusion plans during the Program Committee meeting. To open HPCW to more early-career and non-expert participants, we plan to offer an expanded lightning talks session to lower the barrier to entry in the workshop. The workshop organizers will make any space considerations necessary to include those with accessibility requirements and ensure wheelchair-designated seating remains available to those in need. We also plan to include a 30 minute open discussion section to invite additional audience questions and participation. Furthermore, we will encourage attendees to join the Slack channel hpc-containers to have an opportunity to continue to chat, ask questions and make professional connections.

For any further details or inquiries, contact the workshop organizers at hpcw (at) qnib.org