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.

Alan Alda Gives Inspiring Keynote to Open SC15 in Austin Today

Alan Alda gives the 2015 SC Keynote to more than 3,000 attendees on Nov. 17th in Austin. 

Noted science communicator and award-winning actor Alan Alda opened SC15 with keynote speech focusing on the role of science in our society and the intersection of science and computing to a full house of more than 3,000 people in Austin, Texas on Nov. 17.

SC15 Chair Jackie Kern

“High performance computing has a transformational impact on science in our society,” comments SC15 general chair Jackie Kern, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “For decades scientists and engineers have relied on high performance computing to advance the state of the art in diverse fields ranging from healthcare and automotive safety to renewable energy. Computing is now fully integrated into the scientific discovery process, an equal partner with theory and experiment in improving the quality of life for all members of our global society.

She continues, "Mr. Alda’s focus on communicating the benefits of science to the public—and how we can all do this more effectively—makes him uniquely positioned to help SC continue to bridge the gaps in science understanding and highlight our role in the discovery process.”

To view the write up in the Austin Business Journal, click here.

Mr. Alda--actor, writer, science advocate, and Visiting Professor at Stony Brook University—shared his passion for science communication and its importance, drawing on his personal experiences including his 11 years as host of the TV series Scientific American Frontiers.

Throughout his 40-year career, he has won seven Emmys, six Golden Globes, and three Directors Guild of America awards for directing. Alda also hosted the 2010 PBS mini-series The Human Spark and wrote Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, a play about the personal life of the great scientist who discovered radium. He teamed up with PBS again in 2013 for Brains on Trial, a neurological look at brains in the court room.

A recipient of the National Science Board’s Public Service Award, Alda is a visiting professor at and founding member of Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, where he helps develop innovative programs on how scientists communicate with the public. He is also on the Board of Directors of the World Science Festival.

Connecting Live in Austin with One of the Mosts Powerful Networks in the World

The SCinet network, SC’s Supercomputing Internet, is now live! On November 14, the Austin Convention Center became home to the fastest and most innovative computer network in the world built by volunteers, delivering more than 1.6 terabits per second of network bandwidth to the SC conference (SC15).

SCinet gives the SC conference attendees a unique chance to showcase and discover the latest research in HPC. By building the fastest, most innovative operational network possible every year, SCinet enables data-intensive research and live-use of high performing hardware to run multi-gigabit demonstrations, requiring a fast and robust infrastructure.

SC15 SCinet Contributors (click to enlarge).

“This network is unrivaled with regards to its capabilities and the broad-reaching influence, both nationally and internationally, to support demonstrations and experiments that could not be done easily in any other place. It’s a one-of-a-kind environment where research meets production,” says Davey Wheeler, SCinet Chair and Senior Network Engineer from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). “As the SCinet Chair leading the development of this network, this year is a culmination of 17 years of experience working on SCinet from year to year. It is humbling and honoring to be able to work aside these colleagues and see the tremendous talent, dedication, and creativity of the volunteers.”

SCinet is built by a team of expert volunteers from around the world, taking one year to design the network, three weeks to set it up, four days to operate it, and twenty-four hours to tear it down. Over 100 engineers from industry, academia and government institutions came together to build this network, using over $22 million in loaned equipment and over 89 miles of newly installed fiber optic cables.

“Having been the SCinet Chair for SC07 in Reno, I am intimately familiar with the incredible amount of planning and work that goes into creating what will be the most powerful network. Over 130 SCinet volunteers from more than 15 countries have worked energetically for the past year to provide wired and wireless access to our conference attendees, and the platform for our exhibitors to showcase bandwidth-driven HPC and cloud computing applications. SCinet continues to be a crucial part of SC and I am extremely grateful for their hard work,” says Jackie Kern, Director of IT Shared Services at UIUC and SC15 Conference Chair.

For SC15, SCinet has connected multiple 100 gigabit circuits, bringing an unprecedented 1.62 terabits per second of bandwidth to the Austin Convention Center. Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) leads this effort in collaboration with leading national and international research networks and commodity providers. LEARN and SCinet supports the HPC community by providing multiple 100 gigabit waves and complementary capabilities throughout the SC15 conference events. 

In addition to the massive external capacity SCinet brings to the convention center, the network is also supporting research initiatives through a half-day workshop, Innovating the Network for Data-Intensive Science (INDIS); and the Network Research Exhibition (NRE). SCinet organizes the INDIS workshop to discuss technical papers and show floor demonstrations dedicated to high performance networking technologies, innovations, protocols, hardware, and much more.

Further, SCinet is providing the wireless connectivity for more than 11,000 expected conference attendees throughout the conference areas. The SCinet team built the SC15 wireless network using 339 wireless access points to support more than 4,000 simultaneous users on the conference wifi. The wireless network will include support for eduroam (education roaming) service, which allows users (researchers, teachers, students, and staff) from participating institutions to securely access the protected wireless network using their home organization’s login credentials.

SCinet is the result of the hard work and significant contributions of many government, research, education and corporate collaborators who have volunteered time, equipment and expertise to ensure SC15’s success. This year, SCinet continued the Contributors Program and we would like to give a special thank you to all SCinet contributors and volunteers!

Platinum contributors: CenturyLink, Ciena, ESnet, Infinera, Internet2, Juniper Networks, and Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN).

Gold contributors: Brocade, Cisco, and Gigamon.

Silver contributors: Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Austin Convention Center, Dell, Greater Austin Area Telecommunications Network (GAATN), inMon, IXIA, Reservoir Labs, Spirent, and The University of Texas System.

Bronze contributors: CABLExpress, Commscope, Splunk, Verisign, and Viavi Solutions.

Volunteers from the following organizations supporting the development and deployment of SCinet: Alcatel-Lucent, Army Research Laboratory, CABLExpress Corporation, CENIC, CenturyLink, Ciena, Cisco, Clemson University, DFN-Verein, DataDirect Networks, Dell Research, Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), Florida LambdaRail (FLR), Freelance, Georgia Institute of Technology, Idaho State University, InMon Corporation, Indiana University, Indiana University GlobalNOC, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Infinera, Internet Consulting of Vermont, Internet2, JDSU, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI), Louisiana State University, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, REANNZ, Radware, Reservoir Labs, SURFnet, Sandia National Laboratories, The University of Texas at Austin, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, University of Amsterdam, University of California, San Diego, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Heidelberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, University of Oklahoma, University of Pittsburgh, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Utah Education Network, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

If you’re interested in volunteering for SCinet or participating in the Contributor’s Program for SC16, please email scinet@info.supercomputing.org.

HPCwire Interviews Diane Bryant On Eve of HPC Matters Plenary

HPC Matters Plenary Speaker Diane Bryant

Thomas Ayres and Tiffany Trader for HPCwire

Back in September, the news broke that Intel’s Senior Vice President Diane Bryant was named the HPC Matters plenary speaker for the SC15 conference taking place in Austin, Texas.

The theme for this year’s HPC Matters program is “Fueling the Transformation” and Bryant, along with multiple industry luminaries, will be taking the stage before the SC15 opening gala on November 16 to discuss the myriad of ways that HPC is transforming lives.

Bryant leads Intel’s datacenter business unit, one of the chipmaker’s strongest segments. This year, FORTUNE magazine named Bryant to its Most Powerful Women in Business list. Criteria for selection to this prominent listing includes the importance of the woman’s business in the global economy, health and direction of the business, career arc, and cultural influence.

This dovetails well with Bryant’s role as speaker for this year’s HPC Matters plenary. The HPC Matters program, launched by the SC program committee two years ago, rests on four pillars: influencing daily lives, science and engineering, economic impact, and education.

Bryant speaks frequently on all of these issues and has been especially prominent in promoting the benefits of diversity in the workplace. For the upcoming HPC Matters plenary, Bryant will draw on her experience running Intel’s datacenter group, which includes the HPC business segment and products ranging from high-end coprocessors for supercomputers, to big data analytics solutions, to high-density systems for the cloud. In the exclusive interview to follow, she shares her thoughts on where she sees HPC heading in the upcoming years, why it’s an important topic in our world, and how her career at Intel has shaped her views on HPC. Following is the interview:

HPCwire: What key points are you going to touch on in your presentation?
Diane Bryant: We are in the midst of an unprecedented change in High Performance Computing. Everything about how HPC systems are used and built is going to change over the next decade. HPC must support more complex models with more and more data, and enable new usages as industries realize the benefits of very powerful real-time analytics.  To meet these needs, HPC must achieve exascale performance and beyond, while expanding access to more users.  This will require a transformation of not only the systems, but the entire solution stack.

How does HPC matter to you?
Diane Bryant: As an engineer, what excites me is seeing how information technology is used to solve real world problems.  HPC is a transformational capability helping solve society’s most pressing challenges.  Look at the improvements in life science and precision medicine that have really been enabled by researchers and physicians gaining access to more powerful supercomputers.  Seeing industry after industry take these tools with Intel technology as their foundation and use them to improve lives and drive economic growth is tremendously gratifying and exciting to all of us who work to push IT forward.

Click here to go to the full HPCwire article.

SC15 Releases Exclusive Podcast with Science Advocate and Emmy Award Winning Actor Alan Alda

SC15 Keynote Presenter Alan Alda

Listen to Alan Alda, SC15 Keynote Speaker and founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stonybrook University, as he talks about the urgency for clear, engaging and accurate communication in high performance computing (and the importance of supercomputers in general) in this short, but enlightening conversation with SC’s Jorge Salazar.

Alan Alda Excerpt:
“I think the kind of transformation that's already been brought about by high performance computing is extraordinary. And for it to go further and fully realize its potential requires another kind of transformation… Powerful computing affects all our lives and can hopefully save our lives.

It can eventually help us survive some of our unfortunate efforts that have affected climate, for instance. To model climate change is one of the great benefits we're going to get from supercomputing. The trouble is, to really help the public understand all the benefits that they can get from supercomputing, it has to be communicated with clarity so that they get it and they get excited by it… (thus) I think we have to transform the scientists who are explaining this to the public before the public will allow them and participate with them in transforming their own lives with this amazing ability to model things on supercomputers.”

Listen to the full podcast by clicking here.

Background:
Alan Alda, actor, director and writer, has had a lifelong interest in science. He hosted the PBS program Scientific American Frontiers from 1993 to 2005, an experience he called "the best thing I ever did in front of a camera." Perhaps best known as surgeon 'Hawkeye' Pierce on the TV series MASH, Alda has won seven Emmys, six Golden Globes, and three Directors Guild of America awards for directing. His two memoires are both New York Times bestsellers.

A recipient of the National Science Board’s Public Service Award, Alda is a visiting professor at and founding member of Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, where he helps develop innovative programs on how scientists communicate with the public. He is also on the Board of Directors of the World Science Festival.

For more details on the SC15 Keynote Address, click here.  To view the SC15 videos Alan Alda references in this discussion, click here.

SC15: Start the Countdown

SC15 welcome banners are up today in downtown Austin.

Preparing for SC15
SC15 will be a rich and exciting experience for both new and old attendees. To start planning your agenda, begin at the SC15 website. Here you will find descriptions of the activities and a detailed Technical Program Schedule that can be used to build your own personalized agenda.

When viewing the online Technical Program Schedule, once you select an event and want to add it to your personal schedule, just click on one of the calendar icons (Outlook, iCal or Google calendar) and that event will be stored there.

Get the SC15 Mobile App Now Available!
The SC15 App is now available. You can download it from the Apple and Android app stores by searching for SC15 or click here for all the details.. An HTML5 version is available here.

The SC15 app will include the standard components from years past, but with new features for improved attendee experience. Features in the new app include:

•     Searchable event schedule for easy-to-find sessions and events
•     Attendee personalization, scheduling and notes within the app
•     SC15 updates to keep attendees informed and involved
•     Exhibitor directory with map
•     Ability for attendees to easily share their SC experience through Live Activity Feed and Social Media
•     QR Code reader to quickly find SC15 information
•     In-app access to session surveys for sessions you’ve bookmarked in your schedule
•     Integration with ACM Digital Library so that finding session speaker papers and abstracts during the conference is a cinch

You will need to log in to the app and establish an account with your email address. This account will allow you to access your calendar, notes, and other in-app data to sync across multiple devices.

Safety Notes
We value the safety of all SC attendees and want you to focus on enjoying your stay and experience at the conference. To assist you, here are a few common conference reminders and safety pointers to help make sure you have a safe and productive trip.

•     Please make sure to use the buddy system, multiple persons are better--don’t ever walk alone at night.
•     Make sure you have a phone on you in case of emergencies and you have at least one other attendee’s contact information.
•     Please DO NOT WEAR YOUR CONFERENCE BADGE outside of the convention center. This is often a targeting mechanism for scammers and criminals.
•     Ask your hotel staff if certain areas are safe/not safe before going out.
•     Don’t leave your belongings unattended.
•     If you are driving, take a second to double check that your car doors are locked.
•     Stay on well lit or major streets at night.

Registration
Upon arrival at the Austin Convention Center, please proceed to the registration in the Atrium to register and pick up your badge, which you need to wear at all times. We strongly encourage Workshop and Tutorials participants to register the day before the event to avoid long registration lines, or you can register online.

The registration desk will be open as follows:

• Saturday - Nov 14: 1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Sunday - Nov 15: 7:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Monday - Nov 16: 7:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Tuesday - Nov 17: 7:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday - Nov 18: 7:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Thursday - Nov 19: 7:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
• Friday - Nov 20: 8:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Please note: anyone attending the HPC Matters Plenary will need to have a badge, but there is no fee to get one in order to attend the Plenary.

How SC is Organized
There are four main components of the SC Conference: Technical Program, Exhibits, Students@SC, and SCinet:

Technical Program: the heart of the conference, the technical program provides multiple forums for sharing research, development, and applications in high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis:

•     HPC Matters Plenary
•     Invited Talks
•     Technical Papers
•     Tutorials
•     Panels
•     Workshops
•     Posters
•     Emerging Technologies
•     Scientific Visualization Showcase
•     Birds of a Feather
•     Awards

Technical Program registration and badge are needed for attending most of these sessions, while tutorials and workshops require separate registrations.

For the full Attendee Guide, click here.

SC15 General Chair Jackie Kern Previews the Conference and Exhibition

SC15 General Chair Jackie Kern

Following is a brief conversation with Jackie Kern, SC15 General Chair from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Since 2003, she has served as  a member of the SC planning committee and in 2007 she also served as SCinet Chair.  

At the University of Illinois, she is the Director of IT Shared Services where she represents her department on various campus IT initiatives and committees including leading the community in a consolidation of service effort and being the operations chair of the Data Center Shared Services co-location efforts on campus.   

In these efforts she oversees the development of standards, procedures and policies related to data centers, identifies IT resources needed for current and future projects, and markets the services to campus. 
  

Describe how the “HPC Transforms” conference theme came to be this year?
Over the last three decades, HPC has become increasingly important in manufacturing, weather forecasting, medicine, entertainment and many other facets of everyday life. You would be hard pressed to experience a “normal” day for the average citizen without encountering something that wasn’t impacted by HPC. 

Starting last year, the SC conference team launched a program called “HPC Matters” to highlight this impact. The program supports the creation of short videos that explore the use of HPC in improving daily life.

These videos are available at the SC15 video library. The program also supports public talks by industry luminaries, such as the SC HPC Matters Plenary.

For this year, we wanted to dive deeper into why it is important, and to do that we wanted to demonstrate how it transforms lives and the world around us.  We have put together these videos that demonstrate why it matters and how it transforms lives.

SC15 is returning to Austin, Texas for the first time since 2008 – what is it about Austin that makes it a good fit for the SC community?
Austin is fantastic because of the technology-centric community as well as the culture, food, people and music.  We feel this is a really good fit for our attendees and exhibitors. It gives them the right balance of fun and technical aptitude to spark the creativity, and offers a wide variety of opportunities to network and collaborate. And the city itself is also very warm and welcoming to our group.

The SC15 Mobile App.

For someone new to the community, what tips can you offer for tackling the immense Tech Program and the massive exhibition hall?
Plan ahead!  Quite frankly there is too much to see and do at an SC conference so you need to budget your time based on your areas of interests and priorities.  Your best bet is to get plugged into everything now – the website, blog, schedule, conference app, etc.

Start with the conference schedule on the website and go from there. Put a priority on not only learning, but also networking.  Some of the people you meet at an SC conference will impact your career for years to come.  The more people you meet the more opportunities you have to collaborate and get involved.  If you are new, go to one of the Information Booths – they are staffed by veteran attendees who are there to help you.

Also, you will want to download our enhanced mobile app and started getting organized for a very packed week in Austin.

This year's Exhibition is sold out and is expected to draw big crowds.

What are some of the top things you are looking forward to experiencing/attending at SC15? 
Very difficult question since there are so many great things to experience or participate in at an SC conference!  Some of the things that I’m looking forward to are the rich and dynamic Invited Talks, the HPC Matters Plenary with Intel’s Diane Bryant, and the Alan Alda Keynote. In addition we have an international Student Cluster Competition that is sure to be exciting.

Plus the show floor has more than 300 cutting-edge exhibitors and I love checking in with SCinet – the world’s fastest, custom-built computer network.  Then there is the incredibly robust Technical Program. Quite honestly, there is too much to list here.

SC student volunteers with Jeanine Cook, SC15 Student Programs Chair.

The student program went thru some modifications this year.  Can you explain what those were and how the changes have been received?
This year we merged every student program under one umbrella called Students@SC. This is an effort to make sure that we are encouraging the next generation of HPC professionals to be engaged in the community. It provides more opportunities for all the students that apply to be a part of SC. We encourage them to participate in many of the events, such as the Mentor-Protégé Program and Experiencing HPC for Undergraduates. 

We have arranged to bring in key people from across the community to speak about their experiences and encouraged the use of the community to continue to move HPC forward into a new and exciting era.  We are also focusing on diversity and making certain that all students are treated equal and offered the same opportunities for success. 

True success won’t be measured until after the conference once we see how it goes, but we are encouraged by those students who have applied to the program and their engagement thus far.  We are also working with an evaluation team to measure our success and will have those data points after SC15 is over.

Anything else knew this year that people should know about?
This year we have added an all-day track for Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.  There is so much demand for them and with the high volume of submissions, we are excited to introduce this all-day track.  Other exciting things are a much more robust mobile app and networking opportunities like the addition of Duckling – a new networking tool for conference attendees.

Intel's Diane Bryant - HPC Matters Plenary Speaker

What can people expect this year from the HPC Matters Plenary?
It will be amazing.  This year will feature Diane Bryant of Intel who was recently named by Fortune as one of the 51 most powerful women.   She will describe how next generation supercomputers are not only transforming HPC and the future of computing, but also society.  Plus, there is no fee to attend the session although a badge is required.  It is shaping up to be an entertaining session that is a must attend event for everyone - from novice to expert.

Describe the process and time involved for putting on such a big event.
Planning a conference of this quality and magnitude couldn't happen without a fantastic team behind me. Three years ago I was selected to be the SC15 General Chair and at that time I made a conscious choice to select the best of breed to make sure this event was spectacular.

Over the course of the last three years we have spent many phone calls, face-to-face meetings, site visits, and countless hours working towards providing the best possible experience for our attendees. One group in particular spends a considerable amount of time working towards providing the best and fastest computer network in the world for one week in November.

The SCinet team spends an enormous amount of volunteer time designing the custom network, gathering equipment donations from vendors, connecting equipment, working with providers to get connected to the right networks, and then sustaining the network for everyone at the conference.

In addition, our Technical Program team has worked diligently to evaluate the submissions and create a program that is second to none.  Truly it has been the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding three-year project of my career. I am honored to be a part of it.

What advice would you give someone looking to get involved in the SC volunteer community?
The SC community is always looking for dedicated volunteers. The best way to get involved is to come to one of the Information Booths at SC15.  We strive to have new faces as volunteers who are able to provide new perspectives and ideas to keep SC fresh and diverse. 

What needs to happen for you to judge SC15 as a successful event?
To me, the most important thing would be walking around the Austin Convention Center and witnessing the engagement in the collaboration that we expect to see at an SC Conference.  I hope attendees leave feeling that there is simply nowhere else on the planet that offers as much education, collaboration and networking as an SC Conference.  After all, we are attendees ourselves and that remains the ultimate goal!

SC15 Panel Line-Up for Nov. 19th

Asynchronous Many-­Task Programming Models for Next Generation Platforms

Next generation platform architectures will require us to fundamentally rethink our programming models and environments due to a combination of factors including extreme parallelism, data locality issues, and resilience. As seen in the computational sciences community, asynchronous many-task (AMT) programming models and runtime systems are emerging as a leading new paradigm.

While there are some overarching similarities between existing AMT systems, the community lacks consistent 1) terminology to describe runtime components, 2) application- and component-level interfaces, and 3) requirements for the lower level runtime and system software stacks.

This panel will engage a group of community experts in a lively discussion on status and ideas to establish best practices in light of requirements such as performance portability, scalability, resilience, and interoperability. Additionally, we will consider the challenges of user-adoption, with a focus on the issue of productivity, which is critical given the application code rewrite required to adopt this approach.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Robert Clay (Moderator) - Sandia National Laboratories
• Alex Aiken - Stanford University
• Martin Berzins - University of Utah
• Matthew Bettencourt - Sandia National Laboratories
• Laxmikant Kale - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Timothy Mattson - Intel Corporation
• Lawrence Rauchwerger - Texas A&M University
• Vivek Sarkar - Rice University
• Thomas Sterling - Indiana University
• Jeremiah Wilke - Sandia National Laboratories

 

Towards an Open Software Stack for Exascale Computing

The panel will discuss what an open software stack should contain, what would make it feasible and what is not looking possible at the moment. The discussion is inspired by the fact that "this time, we have time" before the hardware actually reaches the market after 2020, so we can work on a software stack accordingly.

We will cover questions such as: Which would be the software development costs? What industries will migrate first? Would a killer app accelerate this process? Do we focus on algorithms to save power? How heterogeneous would/should “your” exascale system be? Is there a role for Co-design towards exascale? Is the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project an example to follow? Would cloud computing be possible for exascale? Who will “own” the exascale era?

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Nicolás Erdödy (Moderator) - Open Parallel Ltd.
• Pete Beckman - Argonne National Laboratory
• Chris Broekema - Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy
• Jack Dongarra - University of Tennessee
• John Gustafson - Ceranovo, Inc.
• Thomas Sterling - Indiana University
• Robert Wisniewski - Intel Corporation

 

Procuring Supercomputers: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Procuring HPC systems is a challenging process of acquiring the most suitable machine under technical and financial constrains aiming at maximizing the benefits to the users’ applications and minimizing the risks during its lifetime.

In this panel, HPC leaders will discuss and debate on keys requirements and lessons learned for successful procurements of supercomputers.

How do we define the requirements of the system? Is it to acquire a system for maximizing the capacity and capability, assessing new/future technologies, deliver a system designed for specific applications or provide an all-purpose solution to a broad range of applications? Is the system just a status symbol or must it do useful work?

This panel will give the audience an opportunity to ask questions to panelists who are involved in the procurement of leadership-class supercomputers and capturing lessons learned and turning that hindsight into best practices to procure and the most suitable HPC system.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Bilel Hadri (Moderator) - King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
• Katie Antypas - National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
• Bill Kramer - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Satoshi Matsuoka - Tokyo Institute of Technology
• Greg Newby - Compute Canada
• Owen Thomas - Red Oak Consulting

SC15 Invited Talk Spotlight: Revealing the Hidden Universe - Supercomputer Simulations of Black Hole Mergers

Numerical Relativity simulation of Binary Black Holes  by Campanelli et al, 2006.

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies power some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. Our understanding of these extremely powerful events and their observations has numerous exciting consequences for our understanding of galactic evolution, black hole demographics, plasmas in strong-field gravity, and general relativity.

Near black holes not only have gravity that is so extreme as to generate observable gravitational radiation, but also highly-relativistic gas flows around them can produce powerful electromagnetic signals as the gas is pulled by extreme gravitational forces, and it is believed to be responsible of the launching of the powerful observed jets across the entire universe. 

Simulation of Accretion Dynamics into a Binary Black Hole System by Scott Noble et al. 2014. The figure shows the rest mass density in the midplane of the black hole binary orbit. Insets are progressively zoomed. Black Dots are the Black Holes.

The mathematics involved in modeling these events is very sophisticated because one has to solve the equations of Einstein’s general relativity and magneto-hydrodynamics, all-together.  The problem also requires very advanced supercomputers running programs on tens of thousands of CPUs simultaneously, and the use of sophisticated techniques for data extraction and visualization. Petascale numerical simulation is therefore the only tool available to accurately model these systems.

This talk will review some of the new developments in the field of numerical relativity, and relativistic astrophysics that allow us to successfully simulate and visualize the innermost workings of these violent astrophysical phenomena. More images and material can be found in these links:

• Numerical Relativity   
• Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations
• YouTube Video 1
• YouTube Video 2
• YouTube Video 3

Speaker background:

Dr. Manuela Campanelli

Dr. Manuela Campanelli is a professor of Mathematics and Astrophysics at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the director of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation. Campanelli was the recipient of the Marie Curie Fellowship (1998), the American Physical Society Fellowship (2009) and the RIT Trustee Award (2014). She was also the Chair of the APS Topical Group in Gravitation in 2013.

Dr. Campanelli has an extensive research experience on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, astrophysics of black holes and gravitational waves. She is known for groundbreaking work on numerical simulations of binary black hole space times and for explorations of physical effects such as “super kicks” and spin-driven orbital dynamics.

In 2005, she was the lead author of a work that produced a breakthrough on binary black hole simulations. In 2007, she discovered that supermassive black holes can be ejected from most galaxies at speeds of up to 4000km/s. Her more current research focuses on computer simulations of merging supermassive black holes, and on magnetohydrodynamics simulations of their accretion disk and jet dynamics, in connection with both gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations. She also participates in the LIGO scientific collaboration. The search for gravitational waves from binary black holes and binary neutron stars moved forward in September with the first observing run of the upgraded laser interferometer, Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors.

Dr. Campanelli’s research include numerous publications and invited presentations and reviews papers. One of her papers was recently highlighted by the APS as one of the landmark papers of the century  on the subject of general relativity, starting with a contribution from Einstein himself. Her work was highlighted by the American Physical Society’s Focus, New Scientist, Astronomy, and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s LIGO Magazine. More info can be found by clicking here.

SC15 Panel Line-Up for Nov. 18th

Supercomputing and Big Data: From Collision to Convergence

As data intensive science emerges, the need for high performance computing (HPC) to converge capacity and capabilities with Big Data becomes more apparent and urgent. Capacity requirements have stemmed from science data processing and the creation of large scale data products (e.g., earth observations, Large Hadron Collider, square-kilometer array antenna) and simulation model output (e.g., flight mission plans, weather and climate models).

Capacity growth is further amplified by the need for more rapidly ingesting, analyzing, and visualizing voluminous data to improve understanding of known physical processes, discover new phenomena, and compare results.

• How does HPC need to change in order to meet these Big Data needs?
• What can HPC and Big Data communities learn from each other?
• What impact will this have on conventional workflows, architectures, and tools?

An invited international panel of experts will examine these disruptive technologies and consider their long-term impacts and research directions.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• George O. Strawn (Moderator) - Networking and Information Technology Research and Development National Coordination Office
• David Bader - Georgia Institute of Technology
• Ian Foster - University of Chicago
• Bruce Hendrickson - Sandia National Laboratories
• Randy Bryant - Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy
• George Biros - The University of Texas at Austin
• Andrew W. Moore - Carnegie Mellon University

Mentoring Undergraduates Through Competition

SC14 Group Photo of the SCC Teams

The next generation of HPC talent will face significant challenges to create software ecosystems and optimally use the next generation of HPC systems. The rapid advances in HPC make it difficult for academic institutions to keep pace.

The Student Cluster Competition (SCC), now in its ninth year, was created to address this issue by immersing students into all aspects of HPC. This panel will examine the impact of the SCC on the students and schools that have participated.

Representatives from five institutions from around the world will talk about their experiences with the SCC with regards to their students' career paths, integration with curriculum and academic HPC computing centers.

The panel will further discuss whether "extracurricular" activities, such as the SCC, provide sufficient return on investment and what activities could change or replace the competition to meet these goals more effectively.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Brent Gorda (Moderator) - Intel Corporation
• Jerry Chou - Tsinghua University
• Rebecca Hartman-Baker - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Doug Smith - University of Colorado Boulder
• Xuanhua Shi - Huazhong University of Science and Technology
• Stephen Lien Harrell - Purdue University 

 

Programming Models for Parallel Architectures and Requirements for Pre-Exascale

Relying on domain scientists to provide programmer intervention to develop applications to emerging exascale platforms is a real challenge. A scientist prefers to express mathematics of the science, not describe the parallelism of the implementing algorithms.

Do we expect too much of the scientist to code for high parallel performance given the immense capabilities of the platform. This ignores that the scientist may have a mandate to code for a new architecture, and yet preserve portability in their code.

This panel will bring together user experience, programming model, architecture experts to discuss the pressing needs in finding the path forward to port scientific codes to such a platform. We hope to discuss the evolving programming stack, application-level requirements, and address the hierarchical nature of large systems in terms of different cores, memory levels, power consumption and the pragmatic advances of near term technology.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Fernanda Foertter (Moderator) - Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Barbara Chapman - University of Houston
• Steve Oberlin - NVIDIA Corporation
• Satoshi Matsuoka - Tokyo Institute of Technology
• Jack Wells - Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Si Hammond - Sandia National Laboratories

SC15 Releases Short Video Explaining Why High Performance Computing is Important to NASA

NASA Aerospace Engineer Dr. Shishir Pandya explains how high performance computers (HPCs) help advance airplane and rocket technologies to save fuel and make travel more affordable for the public.  According to Pandya it is also critical to be pushing technology further to search for that next breakthrough.

This is another chapter in a series of short videos focusing on why HPC is important and of critical value to society. It is part of a three-year SC "HPC Matters" campaign.  Click here to view the entire HPC Matters video library. Also, once again, there will be an HPC Matters Plenary during the conference.  This year's chosen speaker is Intel's Diane Bryant - recently named one of the top 51 most powerful women by Forbes. To view those details, click here.

Editorial note: Special thanks to NASA's Jill Dunbar for her assistance on this project.

SC15 Invited Talk Spotlight: the U.S. Under Secretary for Science and Energy Lynn Orr Presents the 2015 Quadrennial Technology Review

Click here to download the Quadrennial Technology Review.

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Over the last decade, the United States has slashed net petroleum imports, dramatically increased shale gas production, scaled up wind and solar power, and cut the growth in electricity consumption to nearly zero through widespread efficiency measures.

Technology is helping to drive this revolution, enabled by years to decades of research and development that underpin these advances in the energy system.

The Department of Energy’s 2015 Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR) examines the status of the science and technology that are the foundation of our energy system, together with the research, development, demonstration, and deployment opportunities to advance them.

Advancing clean power technologies will be just one of many topics addressed.

This analysis is particularly instructive in the run up to the international climate negotiations taking place later this year at the 21st Conference of Parties, as technological advancements will be crucial to achieving global greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

During his presentation, Under Secretary for Science and Energy Lynn Orr will provide an overview of the highlights of the QTR report and discuss examples of promising research and development opportunities that can help the nation achieve a low-carbon economy.

Speaker Background:

Dr. Franklin (Lynn) Orr

Dr. Franklin (Lynn) Orr was sworn in as the Under Secretary for Science and Energy in December 2014. As the Under Secretary, Dr. Orr is the principal advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on clean energy technologies and science and energy research initiatives.

In this role, he oversees DOE’s offices of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy, Indian Energy Policy and Programs, Nuclear Energy, and Science.  In total, these programs steward the majority of DOE’s National Laboratories (13 of 17).

Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Orr was the Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor Emeritus in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 1985, serving in a number of roles including Dean of the School of Earth Sciences as well as the founding director of the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Dr. Orr holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. from Stanford University, both in Chemical Engineering.

SC15 Invited Talk Spotlight: The U.S. National Strategic Computing Initiative as Explained by the White House's Randal Bryant and Tim Polk

Tim Polk and Randal Bryant will explain the current status of the National Strategic Computing Initiative and provide a look into its future impact as it relates to high performance computing.

U.S. President Obama signed an Executive Order creating the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) on July 31, 2015.

In the order, he directed agencies to establish and execute a coordinated Federal strategy in high-performance computing (HPC) research, development, and deployment. The NSCI is a whole-of-government effort to be executed in collaboration with industry and academia, to maximize the benefits of HPC for the United States.

The Federal Government is moving forward aggressively to realize that vision. This presentation will describe the NSCI, its current status, and some of its implications for HPC in the U.S. for the coming decade.

Click here to review the official Executive Order from President Obama and click here for the official fact sheet.

Speaker Backgrounds:

Randal E. Bryant
Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy
The United States of America
Randal Bryant has been on the computer science faculty at Carnegie Mellon University for over 30 years, serving as Dean of the School of Computer Science from 2004 to 2014. Starting in 2014, he also has been at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he serves as Assistant Director for IT R&D.

William (Tim) Polk    
Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy
The United States of America 
Tim Polk joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1982, where he has concentrated on Internet security since 1987. In 2013, he joined the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where high performance computing complements his duties as Assistant Director for Cybersecurity.

Register for SC15 by Oct. 15th and Save up to $275!

SC15 is the 27th year of the SC Conference series – once again featuring an exceptional Technical Program, Industry and Research Exhibits, Education Program and many other activities.  SC15 is the one place where attendees can see tomorrow’s technology being used to solve world-class challenge problems today.

The SC15 early registration deadline is October 15th.  The fee structure for SC15 makes it even more advantageous to register early this year. Registering early can save you up to $275 off your Technical Program registration (depending on your registration category).  Also, registering by Oct. 15th can save you up to $350 off Tutorial registration. Register early for both and save up to $625!

Conference attendees, click here to register.

Exhibitor Booth Management, click here to register.

Berkeley Lab's Katherine Yelick Wins Ken Kennedy Award

UC Berkeley Professor to Receive ACM/IEEE-CS Kennedy Award at SC15

for Contributions to International Research Agenda

Katherine Yelick

ACM and IEEE Computer Society have named Katherine Yelick as the recipient of the 2015 ACM/IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for innovative research contributions to parallel computing languages that have been used in both the research community and in production environments. She was also cited for her strategic leadership of the national research laboratories and for developing novel educational and mentoring tools. The award will be presented at SC 15: the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis November 17, in Austin, Texas.

Yelick’s work has improved the programmability of high performance computing (HPC) through innovations to parallel languages and runtime systems. Her contributions to compiler research and open source software were key to the success of a new parallel programming model known as partitioned global address space (PGAS), an important software innovation for developers facing the challenges of exascale computing. She developed new automatic performance tuning techniques and runtime systems that maximize performance across a wide variety of computer architectures.

Yelick has authored more than 170 technical papers and reports on parallel languages, compilers, algorithms, libraries, architecture and storage, and she has also trained more than 50 graduate students, postdocs and research undergraduate students. She has worked with interdisciplinary teams developing scientific applications ranging from simulations of chemistry, fusion, and blood flow in the heart to analysis problems in phylogenetics and genome assembly.

Yelick is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley since 1991 and Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1996 where she is currently the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences. In that role, Yelick oversees computing research and facility directions for the Lab, including both the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), where she served as director for five years. Her leadership at the national level has significantly influenced international scientific research on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. 

An ACM Fellow, Yelick was named the 2013 Athena Lecturer by the ACM Council on Women (ACM-W). She is a member of the National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and previously served on the California Council on Science and Technology and the University of California Science and Technology Council. Yelick participated in the National Research Council report, “The Future of Computer Performance: Game Over or Next Level?” on opportunities and challenges for sustaining growth in computing performance. 

ACM and the Computer Society co-sponsor the Kennedy Award, which was established in 2009 to recognize substantial contributions to programmability and productivity in computing and significant community service or mentoring contributions. It was named for the late Ken Kennedy, founder of Rice University’s computer science program and a world expert on high performance computing. The Kennedy Award carries a US $5,000 honorarium endowed by ACM, the IEEE Computer Society and the SC Conference Steering Committee.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

About IEEE Computer Society
IEEE Computer Society is one of the world’s leading computing membership organizations and a trusted information and career-development source for a global workforce of technology leaders, including professors, researchers, software engineers, IT professionals, employers and students. IEEE Computer Society provides high-quality, state-of-the-art information on an on-demand basis. The Computer Society provides a wide range of forums for top minds to come together, including technical conferences, publications, a comprehensive digital library, unique training webinars and professional training. IEEE is the world's largest professional association for advancement of technology and the Computer Society is the largest society within IEEE.

About SC15
SC15 sponsored by ACM and IEEE-CS offers a complete technical education program and exhibition to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world class exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learning.

SC15 Invited Talk Spotlight: Societal Impact of Earthquake Simulations at Extreme Scale by USC's Dr. Thomas H. Jordan

Simulation of a “wall-to-wall” rupture of the southern San Andreas Fault. The peak ground velocities during this magnitude-8 earthquake are shown in color. White lines are seismograms at selected points. Graphic by Geoff Ely, Southern California Earthquake Center (click on image to enlarge).

The highly nonlinear, multiscale dynamics of large earthquakes is a wicked physics problem that challenges HPC systems at extreme computational scales. This presentation will summarize how earthquake simulations at increasing levels of scale and sophistication have contributed to our understanding of seismic phenomena, focusing on the practical use of simulations to reduce seismic risk and enhance community resilience.

Milestones include the terascale simulations of large San Andreas earthquakes that culminated in the landmark 2008 ShakeOut planning exercise and the recent petascale simulations that have created the first physics-based seismic hazard models.

CyberShake seismic hazard map for the Los Angeles region, showing the 2-s spectral acceleration response (in units of surface gravity) at an exceedance probability of 2% in 50 years. To create this map, over 300 million seismograms were computed at 336 sites for multiple realizations of all fault ruptures in Version 2 of the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast using the tomographic velocity model CVM-S4.26. This is the information engineers need to design seismically safe structures.

From the latter it is shown that accurate simulations can potentially reduce the total hazard uncertainty by about one-third relative to empirical models, which would lower the exceedance probabilities at high hazard levels by orders of magnitude.

Realizing this gain in forecasting probability will require enhanced computational capabilities, but it could have a broad impact on risk-reduction strategies, especially for critical facilities such as large dams, nuclear power plants, and energy transportation networks.

Click here for an animation of ground motions in the Los Angeles region excited by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. Areas of high plastic strain and inelastic dissipation are shown in green. Credit: Dan Roten, San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Speaker Background:

Dr. Thomas H. Jordan

Dr. Thomas H. Jordan is a University Professor and the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. His current research is focused on system-level models of earthquake processes, earthquake forecasting, continental structure and dynamics, and full-3D waveform tomography.

As the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), he coordinates an international research program in earthquake system science that involves over 1000 scientists at more than 70 universities and research organizations. He is an author of more than 230 scientific publications, including two popular textbooks.

Jordan received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1972 and taught at Princeton University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He was head of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences from 1988 to 1998.

He has received the Macelwane and Lehmann Medals of the American Geophysical Union and the Woollard Award and President’s Medal of the Geological Society of America. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.