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Georgia Tech Professors Among Top Computing Experts Invited to White House Workshop

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Select experts from across the United States representing a broad range of high performance computing (HPC) expertise from government, universities, and industry converged near Washington, D.C., Oct. 20, to discuss the future of HPC performance, use, and accessibility. The workshop was convened in response to the President's Executive Order, July 29, that created the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), intended to probe the challenges and opportunities of increasing computing demands, the growing role of big data, and the evolving technological landscape.

Two School of Computational Science and Engineering faculty—Chair David Bader and Professor Srinivas Aluru—were among the invited. Bader was asked to participate in a panel addressing a unified path forward for two traditionally disparate HPC systems: those geared for data capacity, and those for computationally-intensive computing.  "The White House has reached out," he said, "to see what Georgia Tech thinks as the nation develops a living roadmap for federal research and development in strategic computing. We are at a convergence of high performance computing and data sciences, and I offered opportunities and challenges to solve real-world problems affecting society and the world."

The Federal NSCI is a newly articulated vision spanning agencies and shaping federal investment strategies. It requires a large coordinated effort within and between the Federal Government, the public, and private sectors. The effort strives to maximize the benefits of HPC, and in doing so strengthen economic competitiveness, productivity, scientific discovery and innovation.

"It is more about driving both the technology and broad accessibility of HPC, and less about building the fastest supercomputer," Bader said. Fast-paced advances, wider availability, and wider use by non-specialists are needed to tackle society's rapidly evolving problems--both in complexity and in scope.  For example, the application of HPC and Big Data, an area where Georgia Tech is considered an emerging leader, is needed to develop solutions in energy and sustainability, transportation, manufacturing and materials, human health, and cyber security.

The meeting brought together experts in diverse areas that contribute to development and application of high performance computing and data analytics platforms, from hardware and systems integration issues, to how to exploit massive-scale parallelism and enhance programmer productivity. “The blueprint developed collectively by the participants,” said Aluru, “will help chart the road map for the future U.S. strategy and leadership in this area critical to technological superiority and economic well being.”

 

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Tyler Sharp
  • Created:10/28/2015
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016

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