National Center for Computational Sciences

ORNL will once again be a major player at Supercomputing 2007 in Reno, Nev. The conference is the premier international symposium for high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, and will be held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center from Nov. 10-16.

Besides touting the individual scientific breakthroughs achieved on its  leadership-class machines, ORNL will preview the future of supercomputing: petascale science. The organization’s booth (number 538) features all electronic content, interactive kiosks, and a large power wall which will allow attendees to learn more about the organization’s research in alternative energy solutions, astrophysics, climate modeling, and fusion energy.

The ORNL exhibit will feature a number of leading scientists as speakers. Speakers include:

• William Tang, of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, will address “Simulation at the Petascale for Fusion Energy Science & ITER” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 11:00-11:30 a.m.

• Mark Gordon of Ames Laboratory will deliver a talk on “Computational Chemistry at the Petascale” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 1:30-2:00 p.m.
• Phil Andrews of the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the University of Tennessee will discuss “Taking NSF computing to the Petascale” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 3:30-4:00 p.m.
• Moeljo Hong of Boeing will address the “Development and Validations of Computational Tools for Flight Vehicles” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 4:30-5:00 p.m.
• Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee will speak on the “November 2007 Top500 list” on Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 2:30-3:00 p.m.
• Steve Scott of Cray Inc. will address “ORNL and Cray: Scaling Supercomputing to New Heights,” on Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 3:30-4:00 p.m.
• John Michalakes of NCAR will elaborate on “Weather Modeling into the Petascale” on Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 4:30-5:00 p.m.

Other speakers include Gil Weigand of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Kwan-Liu Ma of the University of California Davis, and Paul Ricker of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Several ORNL researchers will present papers at the conference as well:

• Philip C. Roth will present “Characterizing the I/O Behavior of Scientific Applications on the Cray XT” at the Atlantis Hotel Ballroom B on Sunday, Nov. 11, from 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

• Henri Monti, Ali R. Butt, and ORNL’s Sudharshan S. Vazhkudai will elaborate on “A Result-Data offloading Service for HPC Centers” at the Atlantis Hotel Ballroom B on Sunday, Nov. 11, from 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
• Wei-keng Liao, Avery Ching, Kenin Coloma, Arifa Nisar, Alok Choudhary, Jacqueline Chen, and ORNL’s Ramanan Sankaran and Scott Klasky will discuss “Using MPI File Caching to Improve Parallel Write Performance for Large-scale Scientific Applications” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 10:30 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
• ORNL’s Sadaf R. Alam, Richard F. Barrett, Mark R. Fahey, Jeffery A. Kuehn, Ramanan Sankaran, and Patrick Worley, along with Jeff Larkin, will present  “Cray XT4: An Early Evaluation for Petascale Scientific Simulation” on Thursday, Nov. 15, from 11:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
• Zhe Zhang, Chao Wang, Frank Mueller, Xiaosong Ma, and ORNL’s Sudharshan S. Vazhkudai, Gregory G. Pike, and John W. Cobb, will present “Optimizing Center Performance through Coordinated Data Staging, Scheduling and Recovery” on Thursday, Nov. 15, from 4:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

Computing and Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is home to the National Center for Computational Sciences, the DOE’s Leadership Computing Facility, as well as the Computer Science and Mathematics Division, the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, and the Information Technology Services Division. In collaboration with the University of Tennessee, ORNL hosts the newest TeraGrid Resource Provider: The National Institute for Computational Sciences. ORNL’s Becky Verastegui is the General Chair of SC07 and several other ORNL staff members will serve in key committee positions. For more information about ORNL at SC07, see http://www.csm.ornl.gov/SC2007.

Source: HPCWire