SC15 Awards Ceremony Recap: Part Two

This is the second installment of the SC15 Awards recap.  To read the first article, click here.

SC15 Posters Chair, Manish Parashar, addresses the SC15 attendees during the Best Poster and ACM Student Research Competition Awards presentation in Austin, Texas.

This article will recap the following from the SC15 Awards Ceremony:

• Best Posters
• The IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers
• Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase
• George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship
• ACM Student Research Competition
• ACM Gordon Bell Prize

SC Posters encourage collaboration and conversations.

The first awards segment to highlight is the robust posters competition, which includes the ACM Student Research Competition.  Research posters showcase some of the most cutting-edge research in high performance computing (HPC), storage, networking and data analytics.

Posters are always a great area for positive discourse.

This year, SC received 254 detailed submissions that went through a rigorous review process. In the end, 114 posters were accepted and seven finalists were selected for the Best Poster Award.

As part of its research poster activities, SC15 also hosted the ACM Student Research Competition. It enables undergraduate and graduate students to experience the research world, share results and exchange ideas. They also have a chance to rub shoulders with academic and industry leaders and gain an understanding of the applications of their research.

The Student Research Competition encourages research excellence.

This year, SC received 64 submissions that went through a rigorous review process. In the end, 25 Student Research Competition posters were accepted. The Student Research Competition includes travel support for all SC15 participating students as well as cash awards to the finalists. This award is co-sponsored by Microsoft Research.

The first place winners will move on to the Student Research Competition grand finals next year. According to SC15 Posters Chair, Manish Parashar, "The poster session is a very important activity where the poster authors and audiences enjoy face-to-face discussion on their technologies for a broader audience and great exposure for their work."

Best SC15 Poster

SC's Manish Parashar congratulates Timothy I. Mattox who was part of the team that won for Best Poster.

Parashar then introduced the overall winner of the SC15 Best Poster Award as "Parallelization, Acceleration, and Advancement of Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) Methods".

Authors are as follows:

• Timothy I. Mattox - Engility Corporation
• James P. Larentzos - Engility Corporation 
• Christopher P. Stone - Computational Science and Engineering, LLC.
• Sean Ziegeler - Engility Corporation; John K. Brennan - U.S. Army Research Laboratory
• Martin Lísal - Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and J. E. Purkyne University.

The other SC15 Poster finalists:

• Performance, Power, and Energy of In-Situ and Post-Processing Visualization: A Case Study in Climate Simulation - with Vignesh Adhinarayanan - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as lead author.
• Development of Explicit Moving Particle Simulation Framework and Zoom-Up Tsunami Analysis System - with Kohei Murotani - University of Tokyo as lead author.
• Efficient Large-Scale Sparse Eigenvalue Computations on Heterogeneous Hardware - with Moritz Kreutzer - Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg as lead author.
• Memory Hotplug for Energy Savings of HPC systems - with Shinobu Miwa - Hiroki Honda University of Electro-Communications as lead author.
• Benchmark Simulation and Experimental Testbed Studies of AWGR-Based, Multi-Layer Photonic Interconnects for Low- Latency, Energy-Efficient Computing Architectures - with Paolo Grani - University of California Davis as lead author.
• Large-Scale and Massively Parallel Phase-Field Simulations of Pattern Formation in Ternary Eutectic Alloys - with Johannes Hötzer - Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences as lead author.

SC15 Student Research Awards.

ACM Student Research Winners
ACM CEO, Bobby Schnabel and ACM President, Alex Wolf presented the winners of the ACM Student Research Competition and took part in also introducing both the 2015 Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research Award finalists:

The SC15 Undergraduate Student Research Award Finalists on stage with members of the Awards Committee.

• Third Place: ”Modeling the Impact of Thread Configuration on Power and Performance of GPUs” by Tiffany A. Connors from Texas State University.
• Second Place: ”Optimization Strategies for Materials Science Applications on Cori: An Intel Knights Landing, Many Integrated Core Architecture” by Luther D. Martin from National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.
• First Place: ”Lessons from Post-Processing Climate Data on Modern Flash-Based HPC Systems” by Adnan Haider from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Then the 2015 Graduate Student Research Award finalists were presented:

The SC15 Graduate Student Research Award Finalists on stage with members of the Awards Committee .

• Third Place: “High Performance Model Based Image Reconstruction” by Xiao Wang from Purdue University.
• Second Place: “Efficient Multiscale Platelets Modeling Using Supercomputers” by Na Zhang from Stony Brook University.
• First Place: "AccFFT: A New Parallel FFT Library for CPU and GPU Architectures” by Amir Gholami from the University of Texas at Austin.

Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase
This is the second year of the new format for the Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase. Six finalists competed for the Award and presented their movie during a dedicated session.

Movies were judged based on the following:

• Quality
• Creativity
• Innovation
• How each enables scientific discovery 

Members of the winning team accept their award.

The Scientific Visualization and Data Analytics Award went to “Visualization of Ocean Currents and Eddies in a High-Resolution Ocean Model," authored by: Francesca Samsel, Mark Petersen, Terece Turton. Gregory Abram, James Ahrens, and David Rogers. 


The other finalists were as follows:

• "Gasoline Compression Ignition: Optimizing Start of Injection Time" with Joseph Insley as the lead author.
• "Visualization Of Airflow Through The Human Respiratory System: The Sniff" with Fernando Cucchietti as the lead author.
• "Visualization of a Tornado-Producing Thunderstorm: A Study of Visual Representation" with David Bock as the lead author.
• "Extreme Multi-Resolution Visualization: A Challenge On Many Levels" with Joanna Balme as the lead author.
• "Chemical Visualization of Human Pathogens: The Retroviral Capsids" with Juan Perilla as the lead author.

IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers
The IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers recognizes individuals who have made outstanding and potentially long-lasting contributions to the field within five years of receiving their PhD.

The winners of the IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers with members of the SC Awards Committee.

The following were the winners as announced by Manish Parashar who is also the SC15 Chair of the Award selection committee:
•    Ilkay Altintas, San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego
•    Aydin Buluç, Computational Research Division, Berkeley Lab (LBNL)
•    Kurt B. Ferreira, Sandia National Laboratories       
       

ACM/IEEE George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship
The George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship honors exceptional PhD students in our field. These Fellowships are sponsored by ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the SC Conference, and include a $5,000 honorarium. The George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Chair is Barbara Horner-Miller.

The 2015 George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship winners are:

Maciej Besta (on the left) and Dhairya Malhotra accept their certificates as winners of the 2015 George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship from Barbara Horner-Miller, the George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Chair.

• Maciej Besta from ETH Zurich for his project "Accelerating Large-Scale Distributed Graph Computations."
• Dhairya Malhotra from the University of Texas at Austin, for his project "Scalable Algorithms for Evaluating Volume Potentials."

ACM Gordon Bell Prize

Gordon Bell

The ACM Gordon Bell Prize is awarded for outstanding team achievement in HPC. The purpose of the award is to track the progress of parallel computing. Particular emphasis is placed on rewarding innovation in HPC to advance science, engineering and large-scale data analytics.

According to Cherri Pancake, ACM Awards Chair, "Solving a scientific or engineering problem is important, but performance as well as scientific outcomes are needed to win this prize." She continued, "Finalists were chosen on the basis of performance measurements already achieved when the papers were submitted.  Teams present their work in two sessions during the conference.  The winning team receives a $10,000 stipend."

Members of the winning Gordon Bell prize team on stage with some of the SC Awards Committee.

The winning selection was “An Extreme-Scale Implicit Solver for Complex PDEs: Highly Heterogeneous Flow in Earth’s Mantle” in the category Scalabilty and was authored by:

• Johann Rudi - The University of Texas at Austin
• A. Cristiano I. Malossi - IBM Corporation
• Tobin Isaac - The University of Texas at Austin
• Georg Stadler - Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
• Michael Gurnis - California Institute of Technology
• Peter W. J. Staar - IBM Corporation
• Yves Ineichen - IBM Corporation
• Costas Bekas - IBM Corporation
• Alessandro Curioni - IBM Corporation
• Omar Ghattas - The University of Texas at Austin

Listed below are the other finalists who also deserve congratulations:

• “Massively Parallel Models of the Human Circulatory System” with research led by Amanda Randles - Duke University.
• “An Extreme-Scale Implicit Solver for Complex -PDEs: Highly Heterogeneous Flow in Earth’s Mantle” with research led by Johann Rudi - The University of Texas at Austin.
• “The In-Silico Lab-on-a-Chip: Petascale and High-Throughput Simulations of Microfluidics at Cell Resolution - with research led by Diego Rossinelli - ETH Zurich.
• “Pushing Back the Limit of Ab-initio Quantum Transport Simulations on Hybrid Supercomputers" - with research led by Mauro Calderara - ETH Zurich.
• “Implicit Nonlinear Wave Simulation with 1.08T DOF and 0.270T Unstructured Finite Elements to Enhance Comprehensive Earthquake Simulation” - with research led by Tsuyoshi Ichimura - University of Tokyo.

This completes the summary of the SC15 Awards Ceremony.  Congratulations to all finalists and winners. Check back here for more conference updates or click here to view the SC16 website.

SC15 Awards Recap: Part 1

Once again, the SC Awards Ceremony was an entertaining event and one of the many highlights of conference week. This year, the SC15 Award Co-Chairs were Padma Raghavan and Franck Cappello who helped open the SC15 Awards Ceremony

According to Cappello, “The awards are very important for the SC conference series. They celebrate the best and the brightest of High Performance Computing [HPC].  The selection of the finalists and winners follow a very strict and codified process, involving many members of the program committee.”

SC15 Award Co-Chairs were Padma Raghavan and Franck Cappello.

He continued, “Awards are not just plaques or certificates. They define excellence. They set the bar for the years to come. They are a very powerful inspiration for young and senior researchers.”

Raghavan added that even being an award finalist at SC15 is already an achievement in itself. Following is a brief summary of some of the SC15 award winners.

SC15 Student Cluster Competition
The Student Cluster Competition is comprised of two awards: the first for the Highest LINPACK and the 2nd for the Overall Winner. These awards showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition.   It’s a non-stop, real-time, 48-hour challenge where students race to assemble a small cluster at SC15 to demonstrate the greatest sustained performance across a series of applications.

The students partner with vendors to design and build a cutting-edge cluster from commercially available components, not to exceed a 3120-watt power limit and work with application experts to tune and run the competition codes.  The Student Cluster competition is supported by Allinea and Schlumberger.

The first Student Cluster Competition award - Highest LINPACK Benchmark - went to Team TUMuch Phun, Technische Universität from München, Germany.       

Team TUMuch Phun, Technische Universität from München, Germany, receive the Highest LINPACK Benchmark award from SC15 Student Cluster Competition Chair, Hai-Ah Nam (far right). 

The Overall Student Cluster Competition winner was determined based on a combined score for correctly completed workload, benchmark performance, demonstrated understanding of architecture and performance through profiling and analysis, and interviews. This year’s winner was Team Diablo from Tsinghua University in China.

Team Diablo, Tsinghua University in China, celebrate winning the SC15 Student Cluster Competition.

Technical Papers Program

Jeffrey S. Vetter, SC15 Technical Program Chair, presents interesting data from this year’s submissions during the SC15 awards ceremony in Austin, Texas.

The Technical Papers Program is one of SC’s most valued components.  Each year SC receives submissions of original research that introduce new ideas to the field and stimulate future trends in HPC.  As in previous years, it was a tough competition, with 361 paper submissions covering a wide range of research interests and topics.

The committee met for two days in June to review the Papers. At the conclusion of the meeting, the committee had accepted 78 papers, which is a 22 percent acceptance rate.  Of the 78 papers, nine have been selected as finalists for the Best Paper and Best Student Paper awards.

Please note,  all technical papers are available at the ACM Digital Library and can be accessed by clicking here.

Best Student Paper

"Parallel Distributed Memory Construction of Suffix and Longest Common Prefix Arrays” by Patrick Flick and Srinivas Aluru was selected as the SC15 best student paper.

Patrick Flick’s and Srinivas Aluru’s winning paper proposes a novel algorithm for the suffix array problem. The performance results are very impressive and demonstrate a hundred fold improvement over existing methods. The algorithm itself has a potential broad impact on the field of genomics.

The three other finalists were:

• Adaptive and Transparent Cache Bypassing for GPUs - with Ang Li from Eindhoven University of Technology as the lead author.
• A Case for Application-Oblivious Energy - Efficient MPI Runtime- with Akshay Venkatesh - Ohio State University as the lead author.
• GraphReduce: Processing Large-Scale Graphs on Accelerator - Based Systems - with Dipanjan Sengupta - Georgia Institute of Technology as the lead author

Best Overall Paper
 

The SC15 Best Paper, ”ScaAnalyzer — A Tool to Identify Memory Scalability Bottlenecks in Parallel Programs” by Xu Liu and Bo Wu.

Xu Liu’s and Bo Wu’s winning paper proposes methods and tools that isolate the causes of memory bottlenecks in both hardware and software in advanced computing systems. The committee felt the fundamental contributions address the memory wall problem and could have wide applicability in software development at Exascale.

The Best Paper authors (with certificates from left) Bo Wu and Xu Liu receive their awards from members of the SC15 Awards Committee who are (from left) Padma Raghavan, Eva Deelman and José Moreira, co-chairs of the SC15 Technical Papers Committee, and Franck Cappello.

The other finalists were:

• Massively Parallel Phase-Field Simulations for Ternary Eutectic Directional Solidification - with Martin Bauer - FAU Erlangen Nuremberg as the lead author.
• Efficient Implementation of Quantum Materials Simulations on Distributed CPU-GPU Systems - with Raffaele Solcà - ETH Zurich as the lead author.
• Adaptive and Transparent Cache Bypassing for GPU's - with Ang Li - Eindhoven University of Technology as lead author.
• Exploiting Asynchrony from Exact Forward Recovery for DUE in Iterative Solvers - with Luc Jaulmes - Barcelona Supercomputing Center as the lead author.
• PGX.D: A Fast Distributed Graph Processing System - with Sungpack Hong - Oracle Corporation as the lead author. 

Check back here for additional coverage of other SC15 award winners in the near future.