U.S. Department of Energy to Showcase National Lab Expertise at SC21

The scientific computing and networking leadership of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories will be on display at SC21, the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. The conference takes place Nov. 14-19 in St. Louis via a combination of on-site and online resources.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Science and Beyond,” which reflects the broadening adoption of high performance computing into nearly all sectors of industry and its growing impact on the world around us.

Scientists and engineers from DOE laboratories have been involved in the conference since it began in 1988, and this year’s event is no different. Experts from the DOE’s national laboratories will contribute to the SC21 conference program both in person and online by leading tutorials, presenting technical papers, speaking at workshops, participating in birds-of-a-feather discussions and sharing ideas in panel discussions.

“We’re thankful that we’re going to be able to host the conference in person this year, and we’re very excited about the program content – it’s going to be one of the best SC programs ever,” said SC21 General Chair Bronis R. de Supinski, chief technology officer for Livermore Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We’re also excited about the new streaming platform we selected for SC21. It will provide a significantly improved near-real-time livestreaming experience.” 

Conference organizers are taking all necessary precautions to ensure the health and safety of in-person attendees, including requiring full vaccination from COVID-19 and the use of masks indoors. 

In addition to the on-site talks, presentations, exhibits, the Student Cluster Competition, the Data Science Competition and the annual Job Fair, SC21 will take advantage of state-of-the-art online capabilities to virtually deliver a range of technical presentations, workshops, keynotes, panels and more to any device for both remote and in-person attendees. For example, several of the featured talks in the DOE booth (#2227) will be broadcast live via Webex Nov. 16-18 and will include Q&A opportunities with the speakers. The featured speakers each represent their respective labs, with the talks covering a broad range of topics:

• Sayan Gosh, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: “Characterizing Performance of Graph Neighborhood Communication Patterns”
• Marcus Noack, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: “Optimal Autonomous Data Acquisition for Large-Scale Experimental Facilities”
• Yuhua Duan, National Energy Technology Laboratory: “Modeling of Functional Materials for Energy Applications with NETL High-performance Supercomputer Joule 2.0”
• Al Geist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory: “Frontier – The First U.S. Exascale System”
• Arvind Ramanathan, Argonne National Laboratory: “AI-Driven Adaptive Multiresolution Molecular Simulations on Heterogeneous Computing Platforms”
• Paul Crozier, Sandia National Laboratory: “Harnessing Exascale for Whole Wind Farm High-Fidelity Simulations to Improve Wind Farm Efficiency”
• Nathan Urban, Brookhaven National Laboratory: “Computational and Applied Mathematics Research at Brookhaven National Laboratory”
• Sunita Chandrasekaran, Brookhaven National Laboratory: “How Ready Are We to Use the First Exascale Supercomputer, Frontier?”
• Bill Dorland, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: “High Performance Computing at PPPL”
• Timothy Kaiser, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: “Computation for a Greener Planet”
• Brian Van Essen, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Is Disaggregation Possible for HPC Cognitive Simulation?
• Timothy Randles, Los Alamos National Laboratory: “How Containers Are Changing HPC at Los Alamos National Laboratory”

 There will also be a number of virtual interactive technical demonstrations broadcast live via Webex showcasing technologies and applications developed at the national labs. For more information about the featured talks and technical demos, go to the DOE booth website.

Recruiting is another key effort the national labs support during SC. This year participating DOE labs will hold drop-in career chats throughout SC21 to give attendees the opportunity to meet live online with a recruiter. The links to each lab’s recruiting video chat room and schedule is available on the SC21 DOE booth recruiting webpage.

For more information about DOE national lab activities at SC21, go to the DOE booth website. For more information about SC21 and to register, go to the SC21 website, which also features a full schedule of SC21 events. During the conference, attendees can also follow the national labs’ participation via Twitter at @NatLabsHPC.