More than HPC. The SC20 Planning Committee chose that theme in early 2019 to emphasize that as a community, we are more than just the bits and bytes that we work with to solve the problems facing us today. Little did we know how important that would become. And when it became apparent that, with everyone’s safety as our first concern, we would have to take SC20 online – I chose to change our location not to “virtual,” but to “Everywhere We Are.” That’s because it’s true in any year, and any place.

Conference Program

As I’ve written here before, we were far enough into the submissions and acceptance process for a number of conference activities that we were faced with a difficult decision about how far to take SC20, regardless of where or how it was held: either reduce acceptances for major components of the conference…or go big, and put on the conference with its customary breadth and depth.

We chose the latter and were the better for it. As a committee, 742 of us worked harder than ever planning for various scenarios, stretching ourselves to the limits of our agility while we learned more about our virtual platform’s capabilities even just a few days out from the event as the platform itself evolved in response to lessons learned from earlier virtual conferences. We were able to loosen pre-recording requirements for our tutorials and workshops which allowed them to be much more interactive than we had initially thought possible. We facilitated live Q&A sessions for most of our events, delivered an abundant Technical Program – 30 Tutorials, 40 Workshops, 95 Papers, 16 Birds of a Feather sessions, 106 Posters, an additional COVID-focused Gordon Bell component, 12 Invited Talks, 10 Panels, 18 State of the Practice Talks , a vibrant Early Career program, and even an Awards Ceremony – and had a full complement of Exhibitor Forum sessions and 285 interactive Exhibits to encourage the kind of discussions we knew many exhibitors and attendees would long for.

Our SCinet team put on an engaging SCinet program despite there being no buildout of the world’s fastest temporary network. It’s a great look at the people behind SCinet, and the future of it as well.

With the Students@SC program, we kept students involved as volunteers, content creators, cluster challenge competitors from a record 19 teams, and as a key component of what makes SC the well-rounded conference it is, thanks to our extraordinarily enthusiastic Students@SC committee.

And we’re able to keep this vast trove of technical, exhibits, Students@SC, and SCinet content online for the next six months – over 600 hours of content created by you, for each other.

Speaking of you – over 7,440 of you attended SC20 from over 115 countries.

Inclusivity and Diversity

We had great inclusivity and diversity activities planned for Atlanta, which would have been a new city for the SC Conference Series – and one of the most diverse destinations yet for the conference, home to a significant number of local historically black colleges and universities. Those plans were curtailed in March but we were still able to grant 41 inclusivity registration scholarships to students, faculty, and staff from minority serving institutions in the United States, Turkey, and Indonesia. Twenty-five of those recipients were new to SC.

Our new HPC in the City hackathon featured 43 student participants and 21 mentors who used HPC resources and methodologies to analyze a wide range of important Atlanta-specific topics, including K-12 broadband access in underserved areas in Atlanta, human trafficking, voter fraud, and COVID-19 impact on the economy of Fulton County, GA.

And Computing4Change returned, sponsored by ACM SIGHPC – allowing 19 undergraduates the chance to use XSEDE resources Jetstream and Stampede2 to work on student-chosen problems including the environment, overall health, violence, and COVID-19 disease spread, mobility, and its impacts upon healthcare.

Keynote and Plenary: Climate Science and Pandemic Response

Climate science was an important, early choice for our keynote topic before the COVID-19 situation heightened, and our Keynote Chair and I felt it was important to keep that focus as the world turned its attention to all things pandemic. Dr. Bjorn Stevens hit exactly the right note – lighthearted, while setting the climate issues we are racing to solve in sharp relief. It’s definitely worth a view or three.

Watch the Keynote

Our More Than HPC Plenary Chairs put together a brilliant panel of experts to discuss how we are using HPC to fight COVID-19 today, and how we might combine it with data science and data collection in the future in such a way that we’re prepared to instantly take action for the next calamity.

Watch the More Than HPC Plenary

A Community, and a Conference, Endures

Delivering SC20 was an incredible challenge for all of us; volunteers, authors, exhibitors, participants, and organizers alike, in a year that devastated us like no other. There will never be enough words to express the appreciation I have for all of you, and for our sponsoring societies, IEEE-CS and ACM, for their continued support.

I hope you’ll take the time to look back upon what we accomplished as a community and realize that congratulations are in order for all of us – to everyone who donated hours, days, weeks, and months of time and effort to prove that anywhere we are, and everywhere we are, we are more than HPC.

In deepest gratitude,
Christine E. Cuicchi
SC20 General Chair

As the General Chair for SC21, I am committed to a continuation and expansion of the work of previous chairs toward making the conference inclusive and welcoming to all. We have made strides in the inclusivity of the program through double-blind tech paper reviews, welcome sessions for first-time attendees, and making public the demographics of attendees and conference organizers.

SC21 will be pursuing several additional activities to continue our progress toward becoming a more inclusive and welcoming conference. One of the most important arose from a discussion I had with Hai Ah Nam of Los Alamos National Laboratory at SC19. Hai Ah described conversations with SC attendees who had expressed interest in volunteering at SC but didn’t have a clear path on how to make the connection to the committee.

Previously, new faces appeared in the conference organizing meetings primarily through contacts with people already involved in the conference organization. This resulted in a “who you know” culture, where we often saw new faces that looked much like the committee members who were already there. Science shows that racial equity empowers excellence in innovation across endeavors, and a diverse field of organizers can create a more welcoming conference for everyone. From SC21 on, we want to open the doors to wider participation and make volunteer selection transparent.

Specifically, for SC21, we have developed a submission form and process through which people can express their desire to participate in the organizing committee. The new volunteer page maps out the expected time commitments, role descriptions, and benefits of volunteering. Interested volunteers will identify to which committees they would like to commit time and to tell us about their qualifications. We have specifically reserved committee positions for placement through this process and will use submissions through the form to place new volunteers with the planning committee that best fits their interests and skills.

As we move toward a more diverse and inclusive SC planning committee and conference, we hope to see volunteer applications from organizations that have never provided a volunteer before, early career members of our community, people with disabilities, and individuals from underrepresented racial and gender identities. Some financial support will be available for those for whom funding presents a barrier.

As SC21 General Chair, I hope to welcome you to the committee and meet you in St. Louis!

Learn More and Apply

Applications for positions on the SC21 Planning Committee are being accepted from September 1, 2020 and will close September 30, 2020.

Learn more about becoming an SC21 planning committee volunteer and apply now!

SC21 Planning Committee Applications

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Bronis R. de Supinski, SC21 General Chair

SC20 Is Everywhere We Are

You may have noticed a change in our logo—after months of hard work by the SC20 Planning Committee, we are thrilled to announce that SC20 will be a fully virtual conference. As we began exploring how to bring our conference to life in a digital environment, we had the option to go big or go home. We’ve chosen to go big. The vast majority of our usual conference content will be shared during our virtual event in November.

The SC20 Committee set out to shape the virtual experience with these goals in mind:

Recognition

Honor all accepted content by making it available in the virtual conference. 

Opportunity

Make the conference as accessible as possible to the broadest audience of attendees.

Quality

Provide a virtual platform that allows for high-quality delivery of Technical Program and Exhibits content, with interactive access to presenters where possible.

Consideration and Continuity

Preserve as much of the normal conference schedule as possible while being cognizant of attendees’ locations, schedules, and restructured working environments.

We know the wait for information has been long, and we are eager to share our plans with you, while navigating the uncharted waters of event planning during a global pandemic. We thank you for your patience and support, and look forward to an exciting conference for our attendees and exhibitors. No matter where you are…everywhere, we are more than HPC.

Warmest Regards,
Christine E. Cuicchi
SC20 General Chair

Virtual Event FAQ

Visit the Virtual Event FAQ with information regarding hotel cancellations, conference schedule and fees, content submission and publication, and much, much more.

View Virtual Event FAQ

SC20 marks the first time that SC will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, a vibrant city that – home to the busiest airport in the world – will be an easily reached destination for many of our national and international attendees and exhibitors.

Like you, I am passionate about all aspects of HPC: the operation of supercomputers themselves, the education of students and future leaders about the opportunities available to them in the field of HPC, and the transformation of algorithms, mathematics, programs, and computational power into once-impossible scientific discoveries.

By bringing that passion to my role as SC20 General Chair, my goal is to ensure that SC focuses on the entire world of HPC: applications, systems, storage, networks, and the people who bring it all to life.

As a community we broaden the impact of HPC by increasingly collaborating with researchers, scientists, and influencers who have a major impact on our industry, but who are not operating directly in the HPC sphere. Together, we’re more than HPC.

SC20 Focus

SC attendees interpret the annual conference tagline each year according to their own experiences in the world. Here’s what “More Than HPC” means to me, as we continue to prepare for next year’s conference.

“More Than HPC” is meant to evoke our view of the expanding impact of HPC on our daily lives, and the increasing degree to which scientific advances are the result of deep partnerships between HPC providers and science teams. From targeting disease mechanisms leading to more effective treatment, to creating the neural networks for driverless cars, to refining the vehicles that will take the general public into space, our impact is growing daily.

It’s “More Than HPC” when we use machine learning and data analytics to improve the forecasting and tracking of natural disasters, bringing together previously unrelated disciplines to help keep natural disasters from becoming humanitarian catastrophes.

It’s “More Than HPC” when we target disease mechanisms for more effective treatment by blending molecular dynamics, the latest advances in microbiology, and new approaches to scientific software.

When we apply artificial intelligence to address socially relevant issues like poverty and homelessness, and learn how to grow more crops in a smaller space with less resources, we’re employing “More Than HPC” to find those answers.

The Details

HPC Immersion

I’m especially excited about the tremendous potential of our new HPC Immersion program. Designed to create a pathway to conference engagement and HPC community involvement for undergraduate students traditionally underrepresented in HPC and HPC-related fields, the program will specifically target students majoring in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science.

Participants will be fully involved in the existing Students@SC program, and will be guided by experienced HPC leaders and mentors through technical program sessions, including post-session discussions to further illuminate the session topics and how the participants can become involved in those specialties.

State of the Practice

SC20 also features a renewed focus on the state of the practice. Those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to design, install, house, secure, network, and operate supercomputers and the supporting infrastructure have a wealth of knowledge to share, but few opportunities to reach fellow practitioners directly and relate their experiences.

To bridge that gap, SC20 will feature three full days of dedicated State of the Practice Talks as a venue to deliver practical, up-to-the-minute improvements in all areas of interest to SC attendees. Presentations will cover best practices across a broad range of topics at the forefront of HPC including system management, networking, education, and data management.

HPC in the City

We are also launching HPC in the City, an initiative to engage leaders, decision-makers, educators, and students in the greater Atlanta area to work together and combine our collective talents to address problems that are both relevant to the local community and suitable for HPC. One notable such issue is environmental justice, which aims to address complex issues such as adequate access to healthy food, clean air and water, transportation, and safe living areas.

HPC in the City will also tackle health disparities to provide potential solutions to eliminate preventable differences in the burdens of disease, injury, violence, and access to care, offering all people the ability to achieve optimal health. We hope this collaborative experience will engage all voices to bring the power of HPC to make a lasting impact in these issues.

Technical Program & More

And as always, SC20 will feature an extensive Technical Program featuring those who know HPC best – you. Add to that a dynamic Students@SC program and Exhibits featuring the freshest technologies and capabilities developed all over the world, and you’ll find just about everything you need to enhance your HPC involvement.

Spread the Word

In his SC15 keynote address in Austin, Alan Alda – author and six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner – asked us to try harder to communicate our scientific discoveries clearly with the public. Our community thrives when we bring people together and share what we’re learning, and when we work together to change the world.

I encourage you to watch for exciting developments about the conference throughout the year as we prepare to help you get the best out of Atlanta, SC20, and everything about HPC. Get involved – sign up to receive the SC20 newsletter and read articles in the blog, consider submitting a paper, speaking, or volunteering. It will be a rewarding experience no matter how you choose to engage.

Bring your passion and energy for HPC to Atlanta, where together we can be more than HPC.

Watch the preview video

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Christine E. Cuicchi, SC20 General Chair