Brief Q&A with SC15 SCinet Chair David Wheeler

The following is a brief Q&A with David Wheeler, SC15 SCinet Chair from the National Center for

David Wheeler, SC15 SCinet Chair

Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois where he serves as a Senior Network Engineer.

Describe your day job:
One of the responsibilities of our team is to architect the HPC system networking.  We evaluate current and future capabilities to ensure high-performing network performance for our HPC environment.  We also collaborate with the University of Illinois to support our local researchers and serve as members of the ICCN (Inter Campus Communications Network), which provides network services around the state of Illinois for the three main University of Illinois campuses.

How/why did you become involved in SC?
I started working for NCSA in 1998 and part of my hiring package was to participate in building SCinet for SC98 in Orlando.  Little did I know what that would fully entail, but with that opportunity, I was exposed to the extent of work required to bring the network together.  My first job that year was to help lay the fiber in the exhibition hall, which catered to my detailed experimentalist nature.  In following years, I’ve also lead the SCinet Wireless Team, IT Team, and eventually the SCinet management team.

What makes SCinet unique or special?
SCinet is the fastest network in the world created by volunteers. We build it to be the fastest network in order to support all the demos, applications, and cutting-edge technology that is displayed every year during SC.  Additionally, the “fastest” network speed grows rapidly from year to year. In 2013, SCinet brought in 885 Gigabits per second of bandwidth for SC13, and in 2014, SCinet brought in 1.3 Terabits per seconds for SC14. (That’s 1.3 trillion bits of data per second—more than 100,000 times faster than an average home network speed.)

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, SCinet is also a research and education network, or R&E network. This means that in designing and deploying this network and technology, our highest priority is serving our community needs (HPC and SC’s needs). It is a mission-driven network supported purely by volunteer efforts and contributions. It is more than a “customer-client service” relationship, it’s about what can we do to push the limits. How can we build and supply the network for our community? How can we be innovative in providing a high-performance network?

SCinet is also a unique forum where volunteers come from industry, academia, and government share practices and expertise as well as try out the latest research and technologies.

What are the biggest challenges facing SCinet this year?
Building SCinet is an amazing opportunity for the SCinet team but does provide its challenges—there’s no manual for this kind of work. However that is also part of the fun. SCinet is able to test and operate the newest technologies that a lot of the enterprise networks will not see for years.

SCinet is always pushing the limits of network innovation and operations. This year SCinet is provisioning production Software-Defined Networking (SDN) circuits to the exhibit floor booths, providing smarter, dynamically manageable connections. We are very excited to see the turn out for this project.

Describe the planning required to pull off SCinet:
SCinet has an amazing amount of dedicated volunteers and vendors every year who work very hard to make SCinet come to life for the SC conference. We have more than 15 teams that comprise all of SCinet and more than 10 operational teams focusing on all aspects of setting up a network from power to cybersecurity to laying the fiber cables.

It takes a full year to plan SCinet, one week to set it up, one week to operate it, and 24-hours to tear it down. The planning starts in force for the next year the same day as tear down for the previous year. In addition to the exploratory planning that started two years before SC15, we started aggressively planning for SC15 on November 21, 2014—the very last day of SC14.

Describe the technical hardware involved (type/length of cable, computing power, etc):
SCinet will install 80-90 miles of fiber within the Austin Convention Center.  With SCinet supporting more than 10,000 attendees and 330 booths, we expect to need 15 tons of cooling and around 30KW of power at 480V.  We will again supply more than 1 Terabit of bandwidth, donated from vendors and neighboring research and education networks. 

How many volunteers and hours go into SCinet?
SCinet has more than 120 volunteers from academia, government, and industry from over 50 different countries from year to year. Counting the hours is much more difficult though. SCinet’s volunteers are driven and dedicated. Often times we will pull many late nights and do whatever we can to make sure things get done in support of the exhibitors, demos, and attendees and I can’t really put an hour amount on this effort—just a huge amount of gratitude for everyone’s hard work.

How does someone get involved in SCinet for future conferences?
We are always looking for new volunteers. We have information about joining SCinet on the SC15 website. But mainly sending an email with a statement of interest is what it comes down to.

Most of the volunteers are supported by their various organizations that contribute volunteer hours and/or equipment for SCinet. We are greatly appreciative of this and try to widely recognize our community and vendors for contributions through the SCinet Contributor program.

How do you balance heading up this impressive task with your day job and personal life?
That is truly a challenge in taking on this opportunity. I am always thankful for the family I’m blessed with and keep them as a priority.  Additionally I strive to be a model for my children and teach them that hard work is rewarding. Being a volunteer on SCinet and chairing the design of this network is certainly challenging. It is also motivating to see where efforts in my day job overlap and are enhanced by my involvement in SC and SCinet—I would not be able to serve in this role if I didn’t have such great institutional support.

I also have to thank the previous SCinet chairs, including Bill Kramer, for their guidance. One main takeaway was to get at least one thing done for SCinet every day.

I’ve been encircled by many wonderful colleagues and friends who are striving to see SCinet succeed in providing the most capable network set up in a short amount of time.

In order to say that you had a successful SC15, what do you need to happen?
SCinet really relies on its volunteers and vendor contributors to make everything happen and to have a successful year. We would not be able to do the amazing amount of work in deploying this network without everyone’s efforts and contributions. If we continue to have the momentum that we have every year, this will be a successful show and we will continue to push the boundaries and expectations for high-performance networking as always.

SC15 Announces Intel’s Diane Bryant as HPC Matters Plenary Speaker

Intel's Diane Bryant

Austin, TX (USA) – September 10, 2015 – SC15 today announced that Intel’s Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group, has been selected as the HPC Matters plenary speaker at the 27th annual SC15 conference on high performance computing (HPC), networking, storage and analysis.

Starting in 2013, the SC conference organizers launched “HPC Matters” to encourage members of the computational sciences community to share their thoughts, vision, and experiences with how high performance computers are used to improve the lives of people all over the world in more simple terms. Four pillars provide structure to the program: Influencing Daily Lives; Science and Engineering; Economic Impact; and Education

Bryant will discuss how next-generation supercomputers are transforming HPC and presenting exciting opportunities to advance scientific research and discovery to deliver far-reaching impacts on society.

“In a real sense, transformation is at the heart of existence, and ultimately the challenge and opportunity before us is to perceive and comprehend the power of transformation so that we can use it for the good of the world and everything in it. Nothing does that better than high performance computing,” observes SC15 general chair Jackie Kern, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

As a frequent speaker on the future of technology, Bryant will draw on her experience running Intel’s Data Center Group, which includes the HPC business segment, and products ranging from high-end co-processors for supercomputers to big data analytics solutions to high-density systems for the cloud. The SC15 HPC Matters plenary takes place on Monday, November 16th, at 5:30 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center.

About SC15
SC15, sponsored by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and IEEE Computer Society 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. For more information on SC15, please visit http://www.sc15.supercomputing.org/, or contact communications@info.supercomputing.org for more information.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, 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.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Five Women in IT Selected to Participate in SCinet and Attend SC15

The 2014 SCinet team at last year's conference in New Orleans.

A collaboration between the University Corporations for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER) are pleased to announce that five women IT professionals have been selected to receive  funding to actively participate in SCinet and attend the 2015 Supercomputing Conference (SC) in November 2015 in Austin, TX.

The collaboration called “Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS)” developed the program in an effort to expand the diversity of the SCinet volunteer staff and provide professional development opportunities to highly qualified women in the field of networking. The funding is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a supplemental award to the Rocky Mountain Cyberinfrastructure Mentoring and Outreach Alliance (RMCMOA) grant under the CC*IIE program.

Created each year for SC, SCinet brings to life a very high-capacity network -- exceeding one Terabit of capacity -- that supports the revolutionary HPC applications and experiments that are the hallmark of the SC conference. Volunteers from academia, government and industry work together to design and deliver SCinet. Planning begins more than a year in advance of each SC conference and culminates in a high-intensity installation in the days leading up to the conference.

The WINS collaboration received 19 highly qualified applicants from a diverse set of organizations across the US.  The candidates applications were reviewed by  an expert panel of research and education community leaders, including: Wendy Huntoon (led), Greg Bell (ESnet), John Hernandez (UCAR), Jennifer Schopf (IU), and Linda Winkler (ANL).

The awardees have been notified and have accepted this exceptional opportunity.  The candidates will be paired with a SCinet team and mentor.  The awardees are:

•    Sana Bellamine, CENIC, Measurement Team
•    Debbie Fligor, University of Illinois, Routing Team
•    Amy Liebowitz, University of Michigan,  Commodity Team
•    Megan Sorensen, Idaho State University, Wireless Team
•    Kyongseon (Kathy) West, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Network Security Team

The WINS collaboration, comprised of Marla Meehl (UCAR), Mary Hester (ESnet), Wendy Huntoon (KINBER), Lauren Rotman (ESnet), and Jason Zurawski (ESnet), looks forward to meeting and working with the awardees.  This effort focuses on fostering gender diversity in the research and education (R&E) community’s network and computer systems engineer occupations. If successful, the team hopes to work with SC and NSF to continue and expand this program next year.

Supercomputing Serengeti

The SC Perennials offer reflections on the annual migration

By Mike Bernhardt

How many of you can say you’ve attended any type of annual event 27 years in a row?  When it comes to the SC conferences, that claim to fame would only apply to 18 very hardy souls we like to refer to as the SC Perennials.  SC15 in Austin, Texas, will be the 28th annual migration for this group.  For more background on the SC Perennials, click here.

Jack Dongarra addresses the press at SC14.

Professor Jack Dongarra is one of the SC Perennials. Jack’s name is known to both the seasoned conference attendees and the community’s newest entrants.  His work with Linpack, system performance benchmarks and analysis, the TOP 500, and the SC conference itself, among numerous other contributions, has had a significant impact on building awareness for the importance of the HPC community and has been a key factor in bringing an understanding and appreciation of supercomputing to much of the world’s media.

Jack Dongarra is a warm and approachable guy and he wears his professorial title well.  He warmly states that attending the SC conference each year is like a family reunion – a homecoming – with the added benefit of connecting with so many old friends.  That reflection is shared by many of us.   Even though the watering hole location changes each year, the migration of the HPC community, like the great migration of the Serengeti, is an event we can all count on, and one we count on with great anticipation.

The SC conference has such a rich history and has evolved into one of the finest, most respected technical conferences in the world. Looking back, all of the SC Perennials remember that first keynote presentation with the legendary Seymour Cray, “What's this about Gallium Arsenide?”  While a few people recognized the historical significance of that first event in 1988, it never even dawned on many of us that we were participating in a gathering that would change the world of scientific computing so significantly.  Who could have known back then how the SC conference series would grow into the amazing technical program and networking event it is today?

Steve Wallach - HPC expert

One of the community’s undisputed HPC Rock Stars, Steve Wallach, has a fond memory of asking Seymour a question about debugging the Cray-2, the start of many future conversations between the two. Wallach by the way, is one of the honored recipients of the IEEE Computer Society’s Seymour Cray Award*.

I was a Marketing Communications Director with Multiflow Computer at that first event and had the awkward experience of literally bumping into Seymour as I was carrying an unmanageable armful of literature into the tiny exhibit hall area.  Papers went flying everywhere and the man himself stopped to help me pick them up.  I was both humbled and embarrassed, but by the time SC88 came to a close, I was truly inspired.  We didn’t use the term HPC back then.  It was all supercomputing.  And I knew from that time I had found my home in this community.

Several of the SC Perennials recall how manageable the size of the conference was and interestingly the fact that there were very few marketing types in attendance.  I recall that too. I felt awkward telling people I was in marketing – a comment that usually resulted in someone rolling their eyes and brushing me off.  I vowed to do what I could to bring some appreciation and respect to how people in the community perceived us marketing types. 

Maxine Brown has a long SC history.

Maxine Brown who currently serves as Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recalls hosting the Visualization Theater at SC88.  Maxine and her colleagues collected videos that were published as part of SIGGRAPH’s Video Review (SVR), along with a 3D movie created by Digital Productions, a Hollywood computer animation company that owned a Cray X-MP.  In many ways, this was the infancy of 3D movies, and in fact, there were no 3D projectors in Orlando, so her team had to rent one from Miami and have it brought in.

According to Maxine, “I started attending SC to showcase areas of research in which I was involved that were also relevant to the supercomputing community, from visualization in scientific computing to the CAVE virtual environment, to national and international high-performance networks. And, while that’s still an important part of why I attend, it is perhaps even more important that it is the only worldwide venue of which I am aware that attracts most of my national and international collaborators, friends and funding agency representatives, all in one place for an exhausting but productive and pleasurable week.”

We’ll have more reflections from the SC Perennials in subsequent blog posts, but we also invite you to post your comments and share with us some of your favorite SC memories - whether it be technical program lessons, colorful presentations, memorable keynotes, and of course, those amazing special events and parties for which SC has become so well known.  Send memories or story ideas to: sc15communications@committee.supercomputing.org

The legendary Seymour Cray.

*The Seymour Cray Award, is an award given by the IEEE Computer Society, to recognize significant and innovative contributions in the field of high-performance computing. The award honors scientists who exhibit the creativity demonstrated by Seymour Cray, founder of Cray Research, Inc., and an early pioneer of supercomputing.

SC15 Workshops More Vibrant than Ever!

The SC15 Workshops program has broken the record for the largest number of workshops since its inception, and will be as vibrant as ever. The Workshop program includes 22 full-day and 20 half-day workshops distributed across Sunday November 15, Monday November 16, and Friday morning of November 20. The high-value workshops selected this year by a rigorous peer-reviewed process focus on in-depth presentations, discussion, and interaction on topics of interest to the HPC community.

“The diverse set of topics featured at the SC15 workshops this year is unique to no other conference” said Workshops Chair Michela Taufer (University of Delaware). “Long time hosted workshops with an exciting and well-established audience will be held side by side with newer workshops on emerging topics. For example workshops like DISCO and VHPC are in their 10^th edition, while many new workshops are responding to demands for the exascale era, like the new 1st. Numerical Reproducibility at Exascale workshop.”

Attendees can indeed choose among workshops that target technical HPC aspects associated to e.g., irregular applications, architectures and algorithms, such as IA^3, participate in the discussion about educational techniques for fostering parallel programming in undergraduate and graduate curriculums, learn more about the challenges that face women in HPC, or appreciate how HPC is revolutionizing applications all over the sciences with, for example, new computational approaches for cancer.

“While several workshops are wrapping up their program, others are still collecting paper submissions and can serve as a great target for new attendees to present their work at SC15 for the first time” said Workshops vice-Chair Trilce Estrada  (University of New Mexico). The SC15 workshop webpage provides the complete list of workshops. Authors looking for a home for their work can learn more about individual workshops’ scope and URL by clicking on particular workshop names in the program.

“This year, we wanted to encourage attendees to participate in several workshops, across the three days, by introducing a single, small fee of $40 for students and $90 for regular attendees. This pass has to be added to their technical program registration” said the Technical Program Chair Jeffrey Vetter (ORNL). “We hope many colleagues who register for the regular technical program will take advantage of this new opportunity,” he added.

There are no doubts that workshops at SC15, with their rich programs, will complement the overall SC15 Technical Program events, expanding the knowledge of their attendees on subject areas, and extending the HPC impact with greater depth of focus. Register before October 15 and enjoy any workshop at SC for the new single, small registration fee!

Science Advocate and Emmy Award Winning Actor Alan Alda to Open SC15

Alan Alda is the SC15 Keynote Speaker.

SC15 announces that noted science communicator and award-winning actor Alan Alda will discuss the role of science in our society and the intersection of science and computing as he delivers the keynote address November 17, 2015 in Austin, TX (USA).

“High performance computing has a transformational impact on science in our society,” observes 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."

She continues, "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. 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.”

Mr. Alda—actor, writer, science advocate, and Visiting Professor at Stony Brook University—will share 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.

About SC15
SC15, sponsored by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and IEEE Computer Society 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. For more information on SC15, please visit http://www.sc15.supercomputing.org/, or contact communications@info.supercomputing.org for more information.

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, 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.

Finalists Compete for Prestigious ACM Gordon Bell Prize in High Performance Computing

Winners to be announced at SC15 in Austin, TX (USA)

Austin, TX (USA) –  August 20, 2015 – Five outstanding research efforts in high performance technical computing have been selected as finalists in supercomputing’s most prestigious competition, the ACM Gordon Bell Prize in High Performance Computing. The $10,000 prize will be presented to a single winner during SC15 in Austin, TX (USA).

The Gordon Bell Prize recognizes the extraordinary progress made each year in the innovative application of parallel computing to challenges in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics. Prizes may be awarded for peak performance or special achievements in scalability and time-to-solution on important science and engineering problems. Financial support of the $10,000 prize is made possible by Gordon Bell, a pioneer in high-performance and parallel computing and past winner of the IEEE Seymour Cray Award for his exceptional contributions in the design of several computer systems that changed the world of high performance computing.

Gordon Bell prize finalists are selected by a committee comprising past Gordon Bell winners, as well as leaders in the field of high performance computing. Solving an important scientific or engineering problem in HPC is important, but scientific outcomes alone are not sufficient for this prize—finalists are selected from submissions that describe the innovations of the project, detail the performance levels achieved on one or more real-world applications, and outline what the implications of the approach are for the broader HPC community.

“The task of selecting this year’s finalists was difficult, but rewarding,” notes co-chair of ACM’s Award committee, Cherri M. Pancake of Oregon State University. “Each year the Bell submissions reflect the very best of what is happening in the high performance computing technical community and the progress that has been made in applying these remarkable computing resources to society’s most challenging problems.”

This year’s finalists represent the broad impact that the field of high performance computing has across the many disciplines of science and engineering:

• “Massively Parallel Models of the Human Circulatory System,” with research led by Amanda Randles of Duke University and a team of collaborators from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and IBM (abstract)
• “The In-Silico Lab-On-A-Chip: Petascale And High-Throughput Simulations Of Microfluidics At Cell Resolution,” led by Diego Rossinelli of ETH Zurich and an international team of researchers from Brown University, the University of Italian Switzerland, the National Research Council of Italy, NVIDIA Corporation, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (abstract)
• “Pushing Back the Limit of Ab-initio Quantum Transport Simulations on Hybrid Supercomputers,” led by Mauro Calderara with a team from ETH Zurich (abstract)
• “Implicit Nonlinear Wave Simulation with 1.08T DOF and 0.270T Unstructured Finite Elements to Enhance Comprehensive Earthquake Simulation,” led by a team that includes the University of Tokyo, RIKEN, Niigata University, the University of Tsukuba, and the Research Organization for Information Science and Technology (abstract)
• “An Extreme-Scale Implicit Solver for Complex PDEs: Highly Heterogeneous Flow in Earth’s Mantle,” led by Johann Rudi from University of Texas at Austin and a team that includes IBM, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, and the California Institute of Technology (abstract)

One of these submissions will be announced as the winner of the 2015 Gordon Bell Prize during SC15 on Thursday, 19 November.

The 2014 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for best performance of a high performance application went to “Anton 2: Raising the Bar for Performance and Programmability in a Special-Purpose Molecular Dynamics Supercomputer,” from author David E. Shaw and collaborators at D.E. Shaw Research, part of the proceedings of SC14 and available in the ACM Digital Library.