SC20003 Tutorials to Offer Hands-On Experience in Cutting-Edge Technologies

PHOENIX, AZ. — Registration is now open for 29 tutorials, on topics ranging from new programming tools to quantum information processing, to be presented as part of this year's conference, which will convene with the theme of "Igniting Innovation" from November 15-21 in the Phoenix Civic Plaza Convention Center.

Seating is limited for each of the tutorials, which are either half-day or full-day sessions, depending on the topic. A full list of tutorials can be found at http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/tech_tutorials.php. Information about registration – either for a single session or a one-day or two-day passport, is at http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/registration.html.

According to tutorial organizers, the SC2003 tutorials program generated an unprecedented level of interest, with a record number of submissions. Internationally recognized experts from all areas of high performance computing and networking proposed over 100 tutorials, of which 29 were accepted for this year's program.

“The tutorials at the SC conferences are one of the highlights of the technical program and a key reason for many people to attend the conference,” said Harvey Wasserman of Los Alamos National Laboratory, chair of the SC2003 Tutorials Committee. “The SC2003 tutorials program will span a wide range of hot topics aimed at helping users get their work done and offering a glimpse of new and exciting technologies.”

New for SC2003 will be a selection of "hands-on" tutorials offering attendees the chance to try prepared demos and exercises in a laboratory setting as part of the session.

“The hands-on tutorials will be one of the most exciting parts of the conference,” said Wasserman. “You’ll be able to build a grid, profile an application on one of the world’s largest parallel machines, run an application on the TeraGrid, or install and test a powerful cluster – all under close supervision of the leading experts in these fields.”

The hands-on tutorials will be offered in one of two settings. One will be a “laboratory” consisting of 24 workstations provided by Sun Microsystems. The other is a virtual laboratory in which attendees can use their own laptops. For the latter attendees will need to have laptops that are wireless enabled. Certain software also may be required – check the SC2003 web site for details.

This year's tutorial program, one of the largest tutorial programs at any computing-related conference, will include courses on programming tools and languages such as MPI, Python, UPC, Co-Array Fortran, and OpenMP, network security, performance measurement and modeling, and high-performance storage and I/O.

Given the growing importance of distributed computing, a key focus will be tutorials covering building and administering grids, using TeraGrid, high-performance data transport, and distributed/collaborative visualization. New technologies covered will include the Lustre filesystem, regional optical networks, energy conservation techniques for servers, and, in a unique attempt to peek "over the horizon," quantum information processing.
“People are concerned about efficiency, reliability and availability of supercomputers,” said Wasserman. “The “Power and Energy Conservation for Servers” tutorial (session M12) directly addresses an important aspect of this.”

Registration for SC2003 is open now. The tutorials, which require a separate registration fee, will be held on Sunday and Monday, November 16 and 17.

SC2003 continues the 15-year Supercomputing Conference tradition of highlighting the most innovative developments in high-performance computing and networking. Bringing together scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, programmers, system administrators and managers, SC2003 in Phoenix will demonstrate how these developments are sparking new ideas and new industries, as well as rekindling older ones. The conference features the latest scientific and technical innovations from around the world, while its SC Global events will showcase achievements in the arts and sciences among dozens of remote locations.

SC2003 is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society and by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture. For more information, please see http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/.

Media contact:
Jon Bashor
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
510-486-5849