published on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

SARA Superdag 29 November 2005: “High-end on demand”

On November 29, the 22nd edition of SARA's annual Superdag (Supercomputer meeting) took place. The theme of this meeting was “High-end on demand”.

Working to measure with high-end resources and services is not only possible using innovative solutions, but is demanded by customers and partners as well. Important new developments in the fields of high performance computing, high performance networking, visualization and grid technology play an essential part, and hence were discussed extensively during this meeting.

Dr. William Gropp, co-author of the book “Using MPI“ had agreed to present the keynote. Dr. Gropp has contributed to the SCaLeS report for the US Department of Energy. The acronym SCaLeS stands for “A Science-based Case for Large-scale Simulation”.

A new element in the program of the Superdag was the so-called elevator pitch. During this session vendors of HPC hardware had to clarify in a very short time frame (90 seconds each) why their systems would be suitable successors for the present national supercomputer service.

Program

09:30	Registration and Coffee
10:00	Dr. ir. Anwar Osseyran, director of SARA – Welcome and opening remarks Presentation (PDF file 15 MB)
10:20	Dr. Peter Michielse (NCF) – Computational Science in NCF's strategy Presentation (PDF file 3,6 MB)
10:40	Prof. dr. ir. Henk A. Dijkstra (Utrecht University, IMAU) – Ensemble SimulationS of Extreme weather events under Nonlinear Climate changE (ESSENCE)
11:10	Coffee break
11:40	Dr. ir. Cees de Laat (University of Amsterdam) – Towards the LambdaGrid Presentation (PDF file 1,3 MB)
12:10	Dr. A.J. Koster (Utrecht University, Cell Biology Group) – Zooming into nanoscale structures with 3-D electron microscopy Presentation (PDF file 16 MB)
12:40	Lunch
13:30	Keynote speech by Dr. William Gropp (Argonne National Labs) – A Science-based Case for Large-scale Simulation Presentation (PDF file 3 MB)
14:30	Dr. Robert Belleman (University of Amsterdam) – Highly Interactive Visualization on the Grid
15:00	Tea break
15:30	Ronald van Driel (Senior Technologist, Philips Research, Eindhoven) – High-End Computing @ Philips Research: The Next Generation Presentation (PDF file 6 MB)
16:00	Elevator pitch During this session a number of vendors of HPC equipment will present the case for their hardware as a likely successor for the national supercomputer service in one to two minute presentations followed by discussion.
17:00	Drinks
18:00	Conference closing

The pictures below give an impression of the Superdag 2005.


SARA managing director Dr. ir. Anwar Osseyran.



Dr. Peter Michielse, stichting Nattionale Computerfaciliteiten (NCF).



Dr. ir. Cees de Laat, University of Amsterdam.



Keynote speaker Dr. William Gropp, Argonne National Labs.



Dr. Robert Belleman, University of Amsterdam.