From June 15 to 26, 2026, the Research Campus MODAL at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) hosted the hybrid PEREGRINE PIPS-IPM++ Hackathon. Part of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) funded (03EI1082A-B) PEREGRINE project, the two-week event brought together optimization experts and developers to expand the ecosystem of the parallel open-source interior point solver, PIPS-IPM++.
The central goal of the hackathon was to increase the accessibility of PIPS-IPM++ beyond its existing GAMS implementation. Participants were challenged to create new interfaces enabling the global modeling community to exploit parallel high-performance computing (HPC) scalability for massive linear programming (LP) problems.
Over the course of the hackathon, teams explored highly diverse avenues—ranging from Julia integrations to mainstream Python frameworks, with the jury awarding a full podium of innovative solutions:
- 1st Place went to Marjorie Lapointe, who implemented a generic C-interface for PIPS-IPM++ alongside a JuMP integration, creating a practical bridge for Julia-based models to exploit parallel scalability.
- 2nd Place was awarded to Enrico Calandrini (University of Pisa) for his seamless integration of the solver into the natively block-structured SMS++ framework.
- Shared 3rd Place was split between Tobias Reiter (ZIB), who built a Python-friendly pipeline connected with pyomo, and Katie He, who developed the pipspy package and a dedicated PyPSA bridge to directly utilize native network time-slice info.
The outcomes of this hackathon mark a substantial step forward for open-source energy system analysis. By providing a rich matrix of new entry points into parallel optimization, these newly developed tools will heavily shape how researchers compute faster solutions for complex global energy infrastructure planning.
The organizers extend their gratitude to all participants, the PEREGRINE project partners, and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) for providing the computational infrastructure that made this event a resounding success.