ACADEMIA

The 2010 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’10) opened on Monday, May 31, with an unprecedented 1797 registered attendees as the conference marked its 25th anniversary.

In the exhibition hall of the Congress Center Hamburg, 151 exhibitors representing the world’s leading manufacturers of high performance computing systems and software and research institutions were busy preparing for the Monday evening exhibition opening. The 2010 exhibition features 25 percent more exhibitors than last year and required moving into an addition section of the hall. In all, 50 countries are represented at the conference.

“It is extremely gratifying that in light of the economic uncertainty we are seeing around the world, the international HPC community is beating a record-breaking path to Hamburg to both demonstrate their leadership and to learn from their colleagues and competitors,” said ISC’10 General Chair Prof. Hans Meuer. “If you add in the European travel uncertainty caused by the volcanic eruptions in Iceland, the willingness of people to travel to Germany underscores the value of such an international meeting.”

ISC began as a small workshop with 81 participants in 1986 in Mannheim, Germany and has regularly moved to larger convention facilities to accommodate the growing number of registered participants in the technical program and the size and scope of the exhibition. ISC’10 marks the second year the conference has been held in Hamburg, after outgrowing the congress center in Dresden in just three years.

In Hamburg, the technical program encompasses half-a-day of tutorials and three-and-a-half days of technical presentations. The exhibition opens Monday night and continues through Wednesday.

Complete information about the conference can be found on the ISC’10 website.