The technical programme for SC11, the international conference on high-performance computing (HPC), networking, storage and analysis, is now accepting online submissions on the SC11 dedicated site. SC11 will take place from 12-18 November and is expected to attract up to 11,000 attendees from academia, industry and government to the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.
This year's conference, the 24th in the SC series, will offer peered-reviewed papers covering a broad spectrum of technical research fields, as well as panel discussions with leading researchers and industry leaders, posters showcasing research results from around the world, tutorials, workshops and a doctoral showcase. New to the technical programme is State of the Practice, a venue for discussing best practices involving provisioning, using and improving the critical systems and services in HPC, networking and storage. All technical papers, tutorials, workshops, state of the practice reports and posters undergo a rigorous, anonymous peer review by hundreds of internationally-recognised experts resulting in a paper acceptance rate of 20 to 25 per cent.
SC11 participants will address the topic of data-intensive science through a variety of conference activities including the technical programme, exhibits, and the communities programme. ‘Data is a huge challenge in science today. Today, the rapid advancements in data collection and generation are challenging traditional methods of storing, managing and analysing the information,’ said John Johnson, conference thrust chair and associate division director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. ‘Our community is being called upon to rise to the data challenge and develop methods for dealing with the exponential growth of data and the strategies for analysing and storing huge datasets.’
In addition, the SC11 Technical Program will focus on sustained performance and how to achieve real, measurable productivity using leading-edge computing, networking storage and analysis technologies. 'Our community is rapidly moving toward petascale systems, and the SC Technical Programme provides the opportunity to identify the unique choices and challenges we will face as we strive for sustained performance on these systems,' commented Bill Kramer, technical programme co-chair and project director of the Blue Waters project at NCSA. 'The choices we make now will set the HPC agenda for the next decade.'
For the first time in the conference's history, the technical programme will feature a full day of events on Friday 18 November, which expands the programme to six days. Friday events will include tutorials and workshops in addition to the regular offering of panel sessions. The expansion is designed to increase the amount of technical information available to attendees while maintaining the conference's high standards and competitive acceptance criteria. SC11 will also feature the inaugural Visualisation Showcase, which will highlight the art and science involved in creating scientific visualisations that rely on high-performance computing.
Visualisation Showcase submissions will be accepted beginning in mid-March. Abstracts for technical papers and ACM Gordon Bell Prize nominations are due 1 April. Full final papers and ACM Gordon Bell Prize nominations are due 8 April, as are submissions for panels, tutorials and workshops. Submissions for the Student Cluster Competition, which showcases student teams competing to build a small computing cluster, are due by 15 April and State of the Practice reports are due 20 May. All submissions should be made online.
