The 25th International Supercomputing Conference, ISC10, will feature four keynote presentations on a wide spectrum of topics, from scaling up and scaling out of HPC servers, to the use of HPC in China. ISC takes place from 30 May to 3 June in Hamburg, and comprises a packed conference and more than 140 exhibitors.
Kirk B Skaugen, vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and general manager of the Data Center Group, Intel, will discuss 'HPC Technology – Scale-Up and Scale-Out'. In his presentation, Skaugen will talk about the current state of the HPC technologies and trends that will help accelerate deployment (of affordable HPC systems) in the server market. On one hand, the performance trend of HPC systems could be defined as 'scale up'. The industry manufacturing these HPC systems was and still is focused on high-end systems that have broken the petaflops barrier and are now aiming at the exascale boundary. On the other hand, the affordability of systems in the terascale range now makes 'scale out' (spreading the HPC computing base) even more possible than before.
Professor Dr Helmut Merkel, the manager and shareholder of EurAsia Global Concept in Peking, China, will provide an insight into 'How the IT/Internet Revolution Changes the Chinese Society'. There are 380 million Internet users in China, making it the world's biggest online community. Merkel observes that the Chinese are using the Internet for online commerce and to exchange political views. Online payment systems allow customers to use e-commerce platforms like TaoBao, producing a market volume of about 35 billion Euros in 2010 alone. Apart from that, the Internet is also empowering citizens to exert pressure on the government and influence the country’s politics. A real revolution based on Internet and strong computing power is rapidly changing Chinese society.
Professor Dr Thomas Sterling, the Arnaud & Edwards Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University, will share his views in a look at the past year – an ISC tradition since 2003. In his talk 'HPC Achievement and Impact – 2010', Sterling will examine the beginning of the 2 AP (after petaflops) era, which promises to be an exciting and a dramatic leap in technology. New multicore chip architectures, the building blocks of many of the prominent supercomputers worldwide, will be identified and described to track the growth and trends in performance opportunity. The presentation will conclude with the 'Canonical HPC System', a design point that represents the more widely used components, sources, and scales over the preceding year.
Professor Dr Horst Zuse, professor at Technical University Berlin, School of Applied Sciences in Lausitz, Germany, will take attendees down the memory lane with his talk on the 'TOP5 List of the Early Computers'. Zuse, the son of Konrad Zuse (the creator of the first programmable computer, the Z3) will, on his father’s birth centennial, illustrate his father’s contributions to the computer development with pictures and videos. Zuse will also present the development of the secret Colossus-Project (UK, 1943), Howard Aiken’s Mark I (USA, 1944), and the ENIAC (USA, 1944). It is still not well known, that Konrad Zuse founded a computer business in 1949 that produced 251 computers that are worth 51 Million Euros.
