SC18 preview

I've written my customary preview of SC, which is now published at HPC Wire: https://www.hpcwire.com/2018/11/06/sc18-preview-big-in-dallas/.

Over 10,000 members of the global HPC community will gather in Dallas for the SC18 conference. Even a decent sized team will struggle to attend everything the official program has to offer. On top of this, there will be a plethora of public and private meetings outside the official program, many of which are more valuable than the official program. Plus, there will be the usual flood of press releases, social media blasts, etc.

Out of all of this, what will emerge as the key themes? What are some essential things to do/attend? Read the @hpcnotes SC18 preview to find out!

SC18 Networking Receptions

Networking Receptions at SC18 Dallas [updated regularly until SC starts]

A huge part of the SC conference (or any HPC conference) is meeting people - from old friends to new contacts. Here is a curated list of networking opportunities (receptions) crowd-sourced from this twitter thread https://twitter.com/hpcnotes/status/1059437643837161474 and other sources:

Sunday 11th

• Spectrum Scale UG and happy hour, 12-4pm
• LLVM & Flang social, 6pm-9pm, Aloft, http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-October/127303.html

Monday 12th

• Intersect360, 2pm-4pm, Biergarten Restaurant, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intersect360-research-sc18-networking-reception-tickets-51318644447
• DDN user group reception, 5pm, Old Red Museum of Dallas County History & Culture, following user group meeting https://www.ddn.com/company/events/user-group-sc/
• SC official opening gala, 7pm-9pm, https://sc18.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=pec122&sess=sess284
• Beowulf Bash, 9pm, Eddie Dean's Ranch, https://beowulfbash.com/

Tuesday 13th

• Women in HPC, 6.30pm-9pm, Cafe Herrera on Lamar (at the Omni Dallas), https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whpcsc18-networking-and-careers-reception-tickets-51886141847
• IBM
• Cray
• DDN, 7pm, Reunion Tower, tickets via DDN booth #3213
• Nimbix, 6pm-10pm, d.e.c. on dragon st, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nimbix-sc18-lounge-party-registration-50540352555
• OpenACC, 7pm-10pm, Eddie Dean's Ranch, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/9th-openacc-user-group-meeting-sc2018-tickets-50250658071

Wednesday 14th

• Mellanox, 6.30pm, Sheraton, http://www.mellanox.com/sc18/event.php?ls=social-tw&lsd=11.5.18
• Boston Limited, 7.30pm Bob's Steak & Chop House, https://www.boston.co.uk/events/2018/sc18.aspx [pre-booking required via booth #3255]

Tweet me @hpcnotes using hashtag #SC18 to add your reception to this list!

SC18 Tutorials

At SC18, I will be leading two tutorials, along with my long-time co-presenter Owen Thomas and new co-presenter for SC18, Ingrid Barcena Roig.

• 8:30am - noon :  "The Business of HPC: TCO, value, metrics, and more ..."
• 1.30pm - 5.00pm : "Procurement and Commissioning of HPC Systems"

Both tutorials are on Monday 12th November, in room C140 of the Dallas convention center.

Please join us to learn more about how to get investment in HPC, how to spend it wisely, and how to measure the impact.

A useful reading list for travelling to ISC18

Travelling to Frankfurt for ISC? Need to feed your HPC thirst while on planes, trains, or in hotel rooms? Here is my pick of things to download and read so that you are fully informed when you start ISC:

• (Obviously!) The @hpcnotes ISC18 preview at HPC Wire
• The official welcome to ISC18 by the organizers, via InsideHPC
• An article on the race between USA and China (and others) to get to the top of the Top500 at WiredUK "Why the US and China's brutal supercomputer war matters" and my follow up thoughts: https://www.hpcnotes.com/2018/06/does-it-matter-whether-usa-china-eu-or.html
• Sandia to 2.3 deploy petaflops Cavium TX2 ARM supercomputer at Top500.org
• Details on Japan's post-K exascale supercomputer from The Next Platform
• [added Sat afternoon] Top500 interviews Thomas Sterling on Exascale, Chinese HPC, ML and non-von-Neumann
• 
  
• [more to follow during the weekend ...

See you in Frankfurt!

Andrew / @hpcnotes

NAG-TACC HPC Leadership Institute 2018

Just taken over a HPC management or leadership role? Or hoping to soon? Or know someone who could grow into those roles? Or been a HPC director for years but value ongoing personal development?

The HPC Leadership Institute is a partnership between Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) and Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to deliver training on the business aspects of High Performance Computing. The training covers strategy, total cost of ownership (TCO), cloud vs on-site, supercomputer procurement, governance, user services, and much more.

The 2018 course will be held in Austin TX September 11-13. Learn more and register now at:

https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/education/institutes/hpc-leadership-institute

Does it matter whether USA, China, EU, or someone else has the biggest supercomputer?

Much fuss will be made over the ORNL's new Summit supercomputer at the ISC18 event next week - in particular the fact that it means the USA replaces China as the home of world's fastest supercomputer according to www.top500.org. This brings the usual question as to whether it really matters which country has the biggest supercomputer.

Having a supercomputer 20%, or even 2x, faster than a competitor isn’t critical on its own, because it is possible to make up 20% or 2x actual competitive capability through better software, better people, or better service delivery practices.

However, a 10x faster supercomputer would be an issue, because that would typically reflect a political commitment to High Performance Computing (HPC) involving hardware and software and people - and so could mean potential capability dominance.

Of course, if you had the 2x slower supercomputer without investing in people/software/practices to make up the difference, then that would be a meaningful competitive gap and would matter.

Read more in this article at WiredUK: "Why the US and China's brutal supercomputer war matters"