Jamie Van Randwyk, SC20 Exhibits Chair, shares some tips for navigating the amazing array of technologies, products, solutions, and services from cutting-edge innovators that will be on display in the SC Exhibit Hall in Atlanta.

Jamie Van Randwyk
SC20 Exhibit Chair

Describe the Exhibits experience at SC. Who is there, and what are they showing?

Jamie Van Randwyk: SC Exhibits feature the latest technologies from the world’s leading vendors, research organizations, and universities. Exhibitors include leading companies in the industry, universities and research organizations, and brand-new companies with interesting technologies on display, from all around the world. You’ll find information on new processors, networking technologies, software, and cooling systems, plus presentations from international scientists on their latest research results. Because this is such an important conference, you can expect to see many movers and shakers from these companies, universities, and organizations right there on the exhibit floor.

There’s more to exhibits than just the exhibition floor. The Exhibitor Forum showcases a broad range of topics like cutting-edge hardware, advanced software solutions, and data management infrastructure. In addition, the SC Job Fair connects participating organizations with students and postdocs seeking internships or jobs. And the Exhibitor Suites are a place for those crucial meetings between companies and/or universities and research organizations.

Why should conference attendees visit the exhibit floor or go to the Exhibitor Forum?

JVR: The exhibit floor is a great place to see the technologies that will shape the future of large-scale technical computing and data-driven science, and learn about the research that is going on in the field. You also get a chance to meet some of the people who make all this happen, or even meet the right person to enable your next big opportunity in HPC! Many of the exhibitors also hand out ‘swag’ – t-shirts, bags, pens, or toys – so make sure you have enough space in your suitcase.

At the Exhibitor Forum, you get to hear from leaders in industry about what’s going on at the forefront of HPC. It’s a great opportunity to see how the field is advancing from an industry perspective.

The exhibit floor is huge! Do you have any advice to prevent getting overwhelmed?

JVR: The exhibit floor is indeed huge, and in fact this year’s exhibit floor is shaping up to be the largest on record. My primary advice is to go in with an idea of what you want to see. There is an interactive online map linking the exhibitors and their locations. You can search by topic too, for example if you’re interested in software tools you can search for only exhibitors who do that. My second piece of advice is to wear comfortable shoes, because the exhibit floor is more than 168,250 square feet (that’s 15,630 square meters)!

For a quick break to check your email or have a short on-floor meeting with a colleague, we will also have attendee lounges with comfortable seating and strong Wi-Fi signals – a great place to rest your feet.

This year SC is also providing space in an adjacent exhibit hall for local food trucks, so that attendees and exhibitors alike can eat on-site and get back to networking on the exhibit floor as quickly as possible.

See you in Atlanta!

—

Rebecca Hartman-Baker
SC20 Communications Team

SC is an unquestioned pioneer in improving scientific rigor of the works published in its conference proceedings. Over the past 5 years, the SC reproducibility initiative has strived to enhance reproducibility, offering appendices through which the community is given additional detail (beyond what the typical paper structure allows) to build upon a research result. This post is intended for authors and the general community, to call your attention to a few new developments. Reproducibility is a work in progress, and responsiveness to community needs is an ongoing priority.

Beth Plale
SC20 Transparency and Reproducibility Initiative Chair

Q: The name of the initiative is now the “Transparency and Reproducibility Initiative”, how does that affect authors?

A: The new naming is recognition of the growing prevalence of AI-based innovation in HPC, and the awareness that the established norms in HPC paper structuring often impede key decisions. For instance, research results should include evidence for why one algorithm worked and others do not, or why one software architecture is chosen over another. Also, ad hoc methods (e.g., to tune an AIs’ “learning rates”—how much an algorithm corrects itself after each mistake) are sometimes used without justification for why one ad hoc method is better than others.

The call for participation for SC20 has been edited to address the need for greater transparency in submitted manuscripts. Papers making fundamental, non-performance related research contributions to algorithms, or their application within a software architecture, should address in the body of their manuscript the questions of transparency raised above. If additional resources need to be included, they should be linked to in the AD appendix.

Q: How are the Appendices (AD/AE) reviewed?

A: Since its inception the initiative has striven for appendices that improve scientific rigor. Thus, and because appendix information will frequently reveal the identity of the author, the SC AD/AE Appendices Committee (SC AC) is independent of the SC Papers Committee (SC PC). The SC AC works under a double-open arrangement where authors and committee members are known to each other, and the SC AC team is poised to help authors improve their appendices.

SC20 further clarifies that the results of SC AC review of appendices is in the form of recommendations to the SC PC chairs, and that these recommendations are to be provided to the SC PC at each of the multiple points of SC PC review of submitted manuscripts.

Q: Any other important information to share?

A: We’re excited about a new initiative that we are working on this year to take the temperature of the community. SC has nurtured the reproducibility activity over the last 5 years, and the community has had this long to not only respond as authors, but to benefit from the potential the initiative provides for new discovery. The transparency and reproducibility team is building a community survey that should be coming out soon. We are also looking forward to supporting the student reproducibility challenge as in years past. Consult with the SC20 Transparency and Reproducibility Leadership Team, members listed below, and stay tuned!

SC20 Transparency and Reproducibility Leadership Team:

• Beth Plale, Chair, Indiana University
• Stephen Harrell, Purdue University
• John Linford, ARM
• Line Pouchard, Brookhaven National Lab
• Andrew Younge, Sandia National Lab

More Information:

• Transparency and Reproducibility Initiative
• AD/AE Appendix FAQ & Author Kit

—

Rebecca Hartman-Baker
SC20 Communications Team

Meet State of the Practice Chair Brett M. Bode and get ready to submit your work to this new venue at SC20. Submissions for State of the Practice Talks open February 17, 2020.

Brett M. Bode
State of the Practice Chair

Brett is an Assistant Director at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and a co-Principal Investigator on the Blue Waters project. Prior to the current operational role with Blue Waters, Brett was the lead of the Advanced Digital Services division at NCSA, and managed the system software development projects for the Blue Waters project. Before joining NCSA in 2008, Brett spent nearly ten years as a scientist with the Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University, researching ways to deliver better performance to scientific applications from HPC clusters. Brett holds a BS in chemistry and physics from Illinois State University and a PhD in physical chemistry from Iowa State University.

Why focus on state of the practice at SC20?

BB: The State of the Practice theme spans the entire range of SC topics and is already a sub-area under Papers, accounting for three papers at SC19. However, there are many more potential state of the practice advances than can be accommodated under the currently available offerings.

The goal of State of the Practice Talks is to provide a venue within the SC technical program for reporting of advances and best practices of interest to the SC community. State of the Practice Talks allow for submissions of late-developing advances and improvements that do not necessarily meet the high bar of a full SC paper.

What topical areas will State of the Practice Talks cover, and who should submit?

BB: Submissions are encouraged from any area of interest to the SC attendee. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) systems, storage and facility management, HPC project management, networking and cybersecurity, and HPC training and education. We expect submissions particularly from operations-focused staff such as system administrators, operations managers, cybersecurity specialists, and training and outreach coordinators.

State of the Practice Talks, like Papers, require an Artifact Description. What kind of artifacts do you foresee from submissions to this area?

BB: The State of the Practice Talks will include the extended abstract, presentation, and optionally additional artifacts in the digital library. The artifacts will be as varied as the topical areas, and may range from scripts and code snippets to risk management templates to sample materials for demonstrating best practices in education. We encourage the submission of artifacts that, combined with the abstract and presentation, make the submission complete and reproducible.

—

Rebecca Hartman-Baker
SC20 Communications Team