IDH Distinguished Lecture Speaker

By: Dan Reed Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy Group, Microsoft Corporation

Title:

HPC 2.0: The Challenge of Scale

Abstract:

In just a few years, scientific computing has moved from the terascale to the trans-petascale regime, with research on exascale designs now underway.  Large-scale scientific instruments, ubiquitous sensors and large scale simulations are now producing a torrent of digital data, with associated challenges of transport, analysis and curation.  Disciplinary fusion and multidisciplinary collaborations are challenging our social structures, as teams from diverse backgrounds and organizations work together. Changes in scale, whether technical or sociological, always bring new challenges. 

What are the emerging technologies that will drive the future of high-performance computing? How can we best integrate software management of component failures and system resilience, energy consumption and efficiency, and performance optimization in manageable and intuitive ways? How can we measure and optimize the performance of systems at scale? How do we balance use of commodity components and economies of scale against custom design, recognizing that technical computing has always tracked the consumer mainstream? What are the best ways to manage and extract insights from data at scale, and what are the economically viable ways to enable multidisciplinary data fusion and technology transfer? How can we simplify use of technical computing and broaden the base of users?

This talk will examine these and other issues technically, socially and economically, with an eye to the fusion of technology and policy.

Bio:

I head Microsoft's Technology Policy Group, whose role is to help shape Microsoft's long-term vision for technology innovations and the company's associated policy engagement with governments and institutions around the world.

Previously, I was the founding director of the Renaissiance Computing Institute (RENCI) at the University of North Carolina, the Chancellor's Eminent Professor, and Senior Advisor for Strategy and Innovation. Before that, I was head of the Department of Computer Science, Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor, and Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois.

I have served as a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and chair of the Computing Research Association (CRA).

See http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/Reed/ for details on me at Microsoft.

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