"Briefly speaking, Supercomputing is the annual country fair and family reunion of high-speed computing," says SCD director Bill Buzbee. "We go to see old friends, meet new friends, and get updated on current events--to find out what peer organizations are doing, what's going on in massively parallel processing, what new architectures are being provided by vendors, and so forth."
"What's important about
Supercomputing," says John Sloan, head of the SCD High-Performance
Systems Section, "is that it directly targets both users and the
product market NCAR deals in. The conference attracts both vendors at
high end and users that buy at high end--climate modelers, people that
actually use the stuff. We go to look at products and technology for
ourselves, and to advertise NCAR to potential customers that might use
the supercomputing facilities at NCAR."
NCAR is also one of the founders of the Supercomputing Conference Organization. As a charter member, NCAR has a standing membership in the steering committee and works with other institutions to provide continuity and oversight of the conference.
NCAR was well
represented at Supercomputing '95. SCD's Karen Friedman was
Supercomputing '95 registration chair and SCD's Susan Cross was
conference exhibits co-chair (along with Linda Callahan from the
Cornell Theory Center).
NCAR took part in the SC '95 floor exhibition by hosting an NCAR research exhibit, an NCAR Graphics booth, and a portion of the National Science Foundation MetaCenter booth. As part of the MetaCenter booth presentation, NCAR gave a number of exciting interactive demos, including the Visible Human Project and the Distributed Climate System Model. NCAR also participated in the Ptools booth as a member of the Parallel Tools Consortium.
NCAR attendees cited the chance for hands-on collaboration as one of the benefits they gained from the conference. "It was great working with other folks from NCAR, the MetaCenter participants, and exhibitors from around the country," Sloan observes.
"We brought back experience, contacts, knowledge, growth, and a broader view of what's going on in the supercomputing community," says Cross.
For Supercomputing '96, Buzbee is
serving as program chair. Sally Haerer, head of SCD's Technical Support
and Development Section, is technical papers chair.