The SC|05 High Performance Computing (HPC) Analytics Committee today announced the start of a year-long initiative to showcase more visibly the growing area of High Performance Computing Analytics within the annual Supercomputing conference. "I expect HPC Analytics to be one of the most exciting initiatives at SC|05," said Bill Kramer, SC|05 General Chair of the conference. "HPC Analytics adds to the significance of SC|05's HPC Computing, Network and Storage efforts, bringing these resources together while adding sophisticated analysis methods to solve some of society's most challenging problems." As a new Supercomputing conference endeavor, the HPC Analytics initiative will highlight rigorous and sophisticated methods of data analysis and visualization using high performance computing. The dramatic increases in performance, scalability, and overall computational power in high performance computing over the last decade, combined with the increasing importance of making sense of huge amounts of underutilized data has led to the growing area of HPC Analytics. In fact, while HPC Analytics is a strong area of focus in supercomputing government and research communities worldwide, it is also driving the growth and demand for "business analytics" in more mainstream business sectors. The primary objective of the HPC Analytics Initiative for SC|05 is to very visibly showcase this important and expanding area of rigorous and sophisticated methods of data analysis and visualization. In addition to recruiting analytics submissions for SC|05 technical programs such as papers, tutorials, masterworks sessions, and panels, the HPC Analytics Committee is issuing a major new challenge to the high performance computing community to submit stellar examples of real-world analytics applications for an award to be presented at next year's SC2005 conference. Analytics activities will build upon the other main themes of the SC|05 Conference in High Performance Computing, Networking and Storage. The HPC Analytics Challenge is a unique opportunity for industry, academia, government and other organizations engaged in sophisticated data analysis and visualization to develop and demonstrate applications showcasing powerful analytics techniques to solving complex, real-world problems. "The benefit of the HPC Analytics Challenge contest is to provide a forum for researchers, engineers, and analysts to showcase computational intensive applications that solve real-world, complex problems through the use of rigorous and sophisticated methods of data analysis and high-end visualization," said Donald R. Jones, Ph.D., Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and co-chair of the HPC Analytics Challenge. The HPC Analytics Committee is made up of volunteers from many organizations, including: -- Boeing Corporation -- Pacific Northwest National Lab -- Cray -- Platform Computing -- Hewlett-Packard -- Purdue University -- IBM Corporation -- SGI -- Los Alamos National Lab -- Sun Microsystems -- Microsoft Corporation -- Texas Advanced Computing Center -- National Center for -- University of Illinois at Chicago Supercomputing Applications -- Visual Numerics -- Oak Ridge National Lab Submissions will undergo a peer review by select members of the HPC Analytics Committee, which is comprised of prestigious analytics experts from around the world. More information on the competition can be found on the SC2005 web site at the following location: http://sc05.supercomputing.org/analytics. Background: SC|05, the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking and storage, will convene November 12-18, 2005 in Seattle. Under the theme, "Gateway to Discovery," SC|05 will showcase how high performance computing, networking, storage and analytics lead to advances in research, education and commerce. Exciting technical and education programs, workshops, tutorials, an expanded exhibit area, demonstrations and many other activities await attendees. SC|05 is the one place that attendees can see tomorrow's technology being used to solve world-class challenge problems today. Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for more than three decades. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE™ visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today's business analytical needs. Major corporations, academic institutions, and research laboratories worldwide use Visual Numerics' software tools, including such high profile companies as: Bear, Stearns & Company; Barclays Global Investors; Priceline.com; The Dow Chemical Company; Humana, Sandia National Laboratories; and Boeing Company. This large and diverse customer base is supported through a direct sales force, wholly owned international subsidiaries, and international distributors. For more information about Visual Numerics, please visit www.vni.com.