UW Expected to Have Strong Presence at Rocky Mountain HPC Symposium Aug. 12

The University of Wyoming is expected to send a contingent of faculty, staff and students to the fourth annual Rocky Mountain High Performance Computing Symposium, scheduled Aug. 12-13 at the University of Colorado-Boulder campus.

Sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium, of which UW is a member, the annual event brings together designers and users of high-performance computing systems from universities, government laboratories and industry throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Research, education and best practices will be discussed. UW hosted the conference in 2013.

“For faculty and researchers, it’s a way to get out there and see what’s going on with other regional members and network with their contemporaries,” says Tim Brewer, end use support manager for information technology at UW. “And students gain major exposure to the world of supercomputing by going to the conference.”

Brewer says staff members from UW’s Advanced Researching Computing Center (ARCC) plan to attend, and he expects some UW faculty members to be there. In addition, he expects UW students in computer science, engineering and mathematics will want to go. The conference also may draw interest from UW’s botany and molecular science students, he adds.

The symposium is an outgrowth of past events sponsored by the Front Range Consortium for Research Computing. The consortium, based at the University of Colorado, was expanded in 2013-14 to include academic and research institutions in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Utah.

The two-day symposium features a series of tutorials covering many aspects of high-performance computing system design and use, nationally recognized speakers and group breakout sessions called “Ignite Talks,” and a student research poster competition for member institutions. Poster presentation winners from each university will be awarded a trip to Supercomputing 2014 in New Orleans.

“That (supercomputing conference) can be a real eye-opener for students,” says Brewer, who expects about 50 students from consortium member schools to submit poster presentations. That would be up from about 20 submissions last year.

“Students from pretty much any field that is using a cluster for research are welcome to present a poster,” Brewer says.

Irene M. Qualters, division director of advanced cyber-infrastructure at the National Science Foundation, and Rajeeb Hazra, vice president of the Intel Data Center Group and general manager for Intel’s Technical Computing Group, are the keynote speakers.

Conference registration opened this week. The cost is $150 and includes all conference materials, access to all conference sessions and most meals. A “Wednesday Only” tutorial registration costs $100. To register or learn more about the conference, go to www.rmacc.org/hpcsymposium/registration or call (303) 735-3838.

Student registration is $30 for the entire conference. Students who need help paying for registration, or who would like to volunteer in lieu of a registration fee, should contact Becky Yeager, the symposium coordinator, at becky.yeager@colorado.edu.