SC '95 technical program: Rich with information

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• Speakers: William Wulf, AT&T professor of engineering and applied science at the University of Virginia, delivered the keynote address. His presentation, "And Now for Some Really Super Computing," raised questions about the nature of scholarship and its impact on information technology. Cherri Pancake, associate professor of computer science and Intel Faculty Fellow at Oregon State University, gave a talk called "The Emperor Has No Clothes: What HPC Users Need to Say and HPC Vendors Need to Hear."

• High-Performance Computing Challenge: This contest featured groups seeking to outdo each other in the race toward the first teraflop application. The goal of researchers participating in the HPC Challenge was to assemble the greatest amount of computing power and speed in running a single scientific application. Most of the entries were interactive 2-D and 3-D scientific visualizations of National Challenge and Grand Challenge problem solving. The winners were:
  • Best integration of heterogeneous applications: "Galaxies Collide on the I-WAY: An Example of Wide-Area Collaborative Supercomputing"

  • Fastest real application: "Grain Boundary Geometry Optimization with a Genetic Algorithm"

  • Most geographically dispersed and heterogeneous application: "Factoring on the World-Wide Computer"

  • High-performance data management and mining: "Data Intensive Computing Using the National Scalable Cluster Project Meat-Cluster"

  • User interface and reliability: "Fault-Tolerant Distributed Supercomputing with Computational Steering"

  • Overall system interface and functionality: "Legion: Supporting Transparent Wide-Area Computing"

• In-depth tutorials: Tutorial sessions provided up-to-date courses on topics relevant to SC '95 participants. Half- and full-day sessions included "Visualizing and Examining Large Scientific Data Sets," "Designing and Building Parallel Programs," and "Linear Algebra Algorithms and Software for Large Scientific Problems."

• Papers: Presenters offered more than 70 papers on scientific applications from biology to physics (including NCAR's Bob Chervin, who chaired a presentation of three papers on ocean and atmospheric modeling). Additional computer science topics included data mining, partitioning algorithms, matrix computations, performance, compilers, I/O, parallel software and tools, ATM networking, and architecture.

• Panels and workshops: Panels examined topics such as message passing vs. data parallel communications, community networking, the future of supercomputing, and security issues. Dennis Gannon (Indiana University), Larry Smarr (NCSA), and Vince Schuster (Portland Group) wondered "Where is the Supercomputer Software Revolution?" Half-day workshops covered such topics as High-Performance Fortran, scalable I/O, women's careers in computer science and engineering, and object-oriented parallel computing.

• Computing center roundtables: These sessions provided a forum for exchanging information related to computing centers, including system administration, researchers, and software support. In "The Future of the Centers," San Diego Supercomputing Center's Sid Karin and others addressed the question: Given the current slash-and-burn climate in Washington, what is the likely future of the current government supported high-performance computing centers?

• BOFs: Birds-of-a-feather sessions allowed informal discussions of current topics in high-performance computing. Topics included parallel processing of very-large-scale simulations, petaflop computing, and the High Performance Fortran Forum.