ACADEMIA

According to SGI's Dr. Eng Lim Goh, today’s high-performance computing architectures may be starting to limit the pace of industry, science, and research and development. This limitation creates a potential crisis for business and countries striving to innovate and optimize massive amounts of complex data in order to develop a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. That's the theme of a keynote speech that Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Silicon Graphics, will present at TechSouth - The Gulf Coast Technology Summit and Exposition at the Cajundome Convention Center in Lafayette, Louisiana (April 26-28, 2006). Dr. Goh will discuss new concepts in massive shared-memory computing architectures designed to offer the scientific and business communities a way to accelerate innovation, knowledge discovery and analytics. In his second keynote address in as many years, Dr. Goh will deliver insights in his speech titled, "Exploiting Massive Memory for Accelerated Knowledge Discovery," at 12:00 p.m. on Monday, April 27, 2006. "Dr. Goh brings extensive background and vast understanding of supercomputing technology and architectures, coupled with a compelling vision of high performance computing in industry," said Keith Thibodeaux, chairman of TechSouth. "He is a recognized industry visionary and the CTO of a company that has delivered a series of outstanding innovations to the high performance computing community. An example of which includes the state-of-the-art, advanced technology facility right here in Lafayette - the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE) facility opening in late April." "The pace of innovation and discovery will determine which companies, governments and global regions will ascend to the summit of world prominence, making high-performance technology vital to all," said Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior vice president and CTO, SGI. "Most existing computer architectures will prove increasingly insufficient as the demands of users and the deluge of data continue to grow. At TechSouth, I'll explore how leveraging massive amounts of memory may be the key to solving the biggest computing challenges facing scientists, engineers and businesses that are under exploiting the massive data they have generated and collected." Both the business and technical attendees to the TechSouth 2006 keynote will understand how SGI high-performance solutions have, for years, provided the technical computing community with the ability to accelerate discovery and innovation. Now, those same solutions are being leveraged by businesses to help solve their biggest challenges of the enterprise world, optimizing the use of massive amounts of data. TechSouth is an all volunteer, not for profit group with a mission of "Creating an Applied IT corridor along the Gulf Coast". Born four years ago from a grass roots movement across the State of Louisiana, it has continued to gain partners with Technology Councils and Chambers of Commerce in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and New Orleans, which are now active in presenting this summit. In 2006 TechSouth continues to expand into Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. Its signature event, known by most as just "TechSouth" occurs each spring in concert with Festival International. In addition to seminar content and technology demonstrations to enhance competitiveness, the conference will also offer success stories, including fascinating accounts of impact and recovery experiences from companies affected by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and how their technology saved their day. Dr. Goh joined SGI 16 years ago and became chief technology officer in 2001. His tenure includes work in computer graphics algorithms and HPC architectures. A proponent of designing next-generation computer systems specifically for applications performance, Dr. Goh advocates computational density and a balanced multi-paradigm approach, across a globally-addressable memory, to architectural design that maps to the profile of customer applications. A Shell Cambridge University Scholar, he completed his Ph.D. research and dissertation on parallel architectures and computer graphics. He also holds a first-class honors degree in mechanical engineering from Birmingham University, U.K. For more information about TechSouth or to register for the event, visit its Web site.