ACADEMIA

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-- Using the world's most advanced computing and visualization technology to process massive data input from satellites, visualizing scans of an entire human body for the first time and exploring the latest breakthroughs in genomic research are only a few of the topics to be discussed at the first 2003 SGI Technical Users' Conference. This three-day event will be held June 11-13, 2003, at SGI corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The conference will bring together SGI customers who are on the forefront of high-performance computing (HPC) and collaborative visualization-visionaries who rely on SGI solutions to meet their most mission-critical scientific, engineering and creative challenges. Structured for technical users worldwide who are interested in learning ways to optimize the performance of their SGI(R) IRIX(R) and SGI(R) Altix(TM) 64-bit Linux(R) OS-based systems, the inaugural SGI Technical Users' Conference will be attended by over 100 SGI customers from North America, Europe, South America and Asia. HPC and visualization customers from industries as diverse as government and defense, sciences, manufacturing, energy, and media will be offered the unique opportunity to share information, experience and expertise with an audience of their peers, to network with each other and with SGI employees, and to learn how to technically enhance the productivity of their systems. "The conference is designed to build a global community of our customers, enabling them to share information and offering them the opportunity to learn more about our products and our roadmap," said Greg Estes, vice president of Corporate Marketing for SGI. "This event will enhance the relationship between SGI and its customers and facilitate better two-way information exchange. SGI will gain insight into our customers' and technical communities' latest challenges in order to continue to develop leading solutions to meet those needs and enable future innovation and discovery. We also expect that this conference will serve as a springboard for an SGI User Group that will represent users of all SGI products, solutions and technologies around the world." The 2003 Technical Users' Conference opening-day general session will be addressed by top SGI personnel, including: Bob Bishop, chairman and CEO; Dave Parry, senior vice president and general manager of the Server and Platform Group; Gabriel Broner, senior vice president and general manager of the Storage and Software Group; and Kevin McLaughlin, vice president of engineering for the Visual Computing Group. NASA, SGI's very first customer, is also an important contributor to the agenda. The keynote speaker for the conference is William Thigpen, chief of the engineering branch in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, at NASA Ames Research Center. Other distinguished customers from around the world will be speaking at the conference as well. At the close of the conference, following an address by Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the SGI product roadmap, attendees will transfer to the NASA campus for a NASA site tour of the NAS Division and Future Flight Central, a full-scale virtual airport control tower. The 2003 SGI Technical Users' Conference will feature breakout sessions that will cover programming for both SGI IRIX and Linux environments, system operations, advanced storage and data management, new applications, application porting, grid computing, data management, performance tuning, and visualization. An optional tutorial will take place on June 11. The agenda includes tutorials on SGI(R) CXFS(TM) file-sharing software, visualization, IRIX features, and SGI(R) Origin(R) 3000 and SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 tuning, as well as SGI Altix 3000 application tuning. During the conference, user group officers will be elected from among SGI customers. In addition, one SGI representative has been chosen to serve on the leadership team. The governing board will be responsible for the organization, planning and execution of future SGI User Group meetings and conferences. For more information about the 2003 SGI Technical Users' Conference or SGI, please visit www.sgi.com/events/tech_users.