SC15 Preview

SC15 - the biggest get-together of the High Performance Computing (HPC) world - takes place next week in Austin, TX. Around 10,000 buyers, users, programmers, managers, business development people, funders, researchers, media, etc. will be there.

With a large technical program, an even larger exhibition, and plenty of associated workshops, product launches, user groups, etc., SC15 will dominate the world of HPC for a week, plus most of this week leading up to it. It is one of the best ways for HPC practitioners to share experiences, learn about the latest advances, and build collaborations and business relationships.

So, to wet your appetites, here is the @hpcnotes preview to SC15 - what I think might be the key topics, things to look out for, what not to miss, etc.

New supercomputers

It's always one of the aspects of SC that grabs the media and attendee attention the most. Which new biggest supercomputers will be announced? Will there be a new occupier of the No.1 spot on the Top500 list? Usually I have some idea of what new supercomputers are coming up before they are public, but this year I have no idea. My guess? No new No.1. A few new Top20 machines. So which one will win the news coverage?

New products

In spite of the community repeatedly acknowledging that the whole system is important - memory, interconnect, I/O, software, architecture, packaging, etc., judging by the media attention and informal conversations, we still seem to get most excited by the processors.

HPC Bingo

A big part of SC (Austin in 2015) is actually getting there. Most attendees will have to navigate the joys of long distance air travel. If you travel enough, or play the game wisely, you can secure frequent flyer elite status which helps make the air travel more bearable. Here is a version of elite status bingo for HPC. I listed some categories and "achievements" required for each. Can you claim elite HPC status?

HPC System User category

There have been lots of systems in HPC over the years, but we should stick to options that even a recent recruit to HPC might be able to claim. You can award yourself this category if you have used (logged into and run or compiled code) each of these systems:

• IBM Power system
• Cray XT, XE, or XC
• SGI shared memory system - Origin, Altix or UV
• x86 cluster
• A system with any one of Sparc, vector, or ARM, GPU, Phi, or FPGA

HPC Programmer category

Award yourself this category if you have written programs to run on a HPC system in each of these:

• Fortran 77
• Fortran 90 or later
• C
• MPI
• OpenMP
• Any one of CUDA, OpenACC, OpenCL, Python, R, Matlab

HPC Talker/Buzzword category

Buzzwords seem to be an integral part of HPC. To be awarded this category, you must have used each of these in talks (powerpoint etc.) since SC14:

• Big Data
• Any of green computing, energy efficient computing, or power aware computing
• One of my HPC analogies?
• "it's all about the science" (but then just talked about the HPC like everyone else!!)
•  Any reference to "FLOPS are free, data movement is hard" or similar
• Exascale

Previous SC content ...

I'll write some new content for SC15 Austin soon but while you are waiting, here are two of my previous writings on SC:

• Serious - Some tips for attending SC
• Fun - Top 10 myths of SC

Enjoy!