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.

SC15 Panel Focus for Nov. 17th

Panel Title: Post Moore's Law Computing: Digital versus Neuromorphic versus Quantum

The end of Moore’s Law scaling has sparked research into preserving performance scaling through alternative computational models. This has sparked a debate for the future of computing. Currently, the future of computing is expected to include a mix of quantum, neuromorphic, and digital computing. However, a range of questions remain unanswered for each option.

For example, what problems each approach is most efficient for remains to be determined, and so are issues such as manufacturability, long-term potential, inherent drawbacks, programming, and many others. Can neuromorphic or quantum ever replace digital computing? Can we find alternative CMOS technologies and clever architectures to preserve digital computing performance scaling? What is the upper limit of CMOS?

This is a critical debate for a wide audience, because solving many of tomorrow’s problems requires a reasonable expectation of what tomorrow looks like.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• George Michelogiannakis (Moderator) - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• John Shalf - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Bob Lucas - University of Southern California
• Jun Sawada - IBM Corporation
• Mattias Troyer - ETH Zurich
• David Donofrio - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Shekhar Bokhar - Intel Corporation

Panel Title: Future of Memory Technology for Exascale and Beyond III

Memory technology is in the midst of profound change as we move into the exascale era. Early analysis, including the DARPA UHPC Exascale Report correctly identified the fundamental technology problem as one of enabling low-energy data movement throughout the system.

However, the end of Dennard Scaling and the corresponding impact on Moore’s Law has begun a fundamental transition in the relationship between the processor and memory system. The lag in the increase in the number of cores compared to what Moore’s Law would provide has proven a harbinger of the trend towards memory systems performance dominating compute capability.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Richard Murphy (Moderator) - Micron Technology, Inc.
• Shekhar Borkar - Intel Corporation
• Bill Dally - NVIDIA Corporation
• Wendy Elasser - ARM Ltd.
• Mike Ignatowski - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• Doug Joseph - IBM Corporation
• Peter Kogge - University of Notre Dame
• Steve Wallach - Micron Technology, Inc.

SC15 Releases Video Profiling the Importance of Supercomputing as Explained by IDC's Steve Conway

 

Click above to view the latest SC Conference video on the importance of HPC.

Steve Conway, Research Vice President in IDC's High Performance Computing group, provides a high-level overview of the importance supercomputers and cites specific examples where it is making a difference every day.

Mr. Conway plays a major role in directing and implementing HPC research related to the worldwide market for technical servers and supercomputers. A 25-year veteran of the HPC and IT industries, Mr. Conway authors key IDC studies, reports and white papers, helps organize and advance the HPC User Forum, and provides thought leadership and practical guidance for users, vendors and other members of the HPC community.

Before joining IDC, Mr. Conway was vice president of corporate communications and investor relations for Cray Inc. He was also a divisional leader for SGI and headed corporate communications and analyst relations for Cray Research and CompuServe Corporation. Mr. Conway had a 12-year career in university teaching and administration at Boston University and Harvard University.
 
Check back here for more videos on the value high performance computing and dynamic ways it is improving society and mark your calendars for the HPC Matters Plenary on November 16 in Austin, Texas.