SCIENCE

Registration for SC11, the premier conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, is now open on the SC11 website’s registration page (sc11.supercomputing.org/?pg=registration.html). Attendees are encouraged to register by mid-October to save as much as $250 on their technical program registration fees.

SC11, the 24^th annual conference in the SC series, will take place Nov. 12 – 18 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The SC11 Technical Program, featuring peer-reviewed papers covering a broad spectrum of technical research as well as panel discussions featuring research and industry leaders, tutorials, workshops and more, is available online in an interactive calendar format at www.sc11.supercomputing.org/schedule.

Conference planners estimate that more than 10,000 participants from industry, academia and government from around the world will attend SC11.

“People expect the highest quality technical program from SC, and this year will be no exception,” said Jim Costa, Technical Program co-chair and senior manager at Sandia National Laboratory. “Technical program participants will have a wide range of stimulating content to choose from that should generate a lot of discussion and new ideas.”

This year saw a significant increase in high quality submissions, including 100 more technical paper submissions compared to last year.  The increased submissions once again puts the paper acceptance rate at about 20 percent and means SC11 will offer the highest quality technical program, with the best and most important submissions becoming part of the program.  In addition, attendees will have the chance to experience new technical tracks, such as State of the Practice, and will benefit from an expanded program on Friday, Nov. 18.

Each year, the SC Technical Program highlights selected themes and fields of research.  This year’s conference will feature the interdisciplinary thrust of data intensive science and a focus on sustained performance.

“Storing, managing and analyzing the vast amounts of data that science generates or collects every day is a huge challenge, and one that we must address if we hope to gain knowledge from that data,” said John Johnson, Conference Thrust chair and associate division director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Technical program content will address numerous data issues, including managing, manipulating, moving, sharing, analyzing and archiving large datasets, dealing with disparate data formats, and analyzing and computing against near real-time streams of scientific data, he said.

 The program’s sustained performance focus will include papers, panel discussions, posters, tutorials and workshops that address how to achieve real, measurable productivity as the HPC community moves further into petascale systems and beyond.

“It’s an exciting time for our community because of the many challenges and choices we must face in order to achieve sustained performance on these leading-edge systems,” said Bill Kramer, Technical Program co-chair and director of the Blue Waters Project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

In total, SC11 will feature a record 74 Technical Paper presentations, 23 Workshops, 30 Tutorials, and nine Panels. Along with the returning Posters, Disruptive Technologies presentations, Doctoral Showcase, and Birds-of-a-Feather gatherings, SC11 has added a Scientific Visualization Showcase and State of the Practice presentations to further enrich the technical program.

SC11 also will feature a Communities Program, aimed at broadening the community of students, educators and researchers engaged in high performance computing, networking, data and analysis.  Included in the Communities Program is the Education Program, which helps educators integrate HPC and computational and data enabled science and engineering into their classrooms, and the Broader Engagements Program, aimed at involving groups that have been underrepresented in the HPC community in the SC conference.

The International Ambassadors Program provides a welcoming environment for international attendees, especially those experiencing the conference for the first time.  Students have the opportunity to participate in SC through the Student Volunteer Program, a mentoring program, and a job fair.

SC11 also will offer a glimpse of emerging technologies and applications from more than 300 research and industry exhibitors spread across two floors of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

For more on the SC11 Technical Program, please visit Technical Program section of the SC11 website.

For more on the SC11 Communities Program, please visit the Communities section of the SC11 website.

For more on the SC11 exhibits, please visit the Exhibits section of the SC11 website.