Overview
The 26^th International Supercomputing Conference – ISC’11 – will take place in Hamburg, Germany, from June 19 – 23, 2011.  ISC is a key global conference and exhibition for high performance computing, networking and storage. Over 2,000 attendees expected throughout the week, an even more extensive conference program than the previous year, and about 150 leading exhibitors of supercomputing, software, storage, networking and infrastructure technologies, ISC’11 is on track to draw its highest attendance in the history of the event.

Educational Tutorials and Workshops on Sunday, June 19
This year’s conference program includes insights on the hottest HPC topics from the world’s best speakers, as recommended by 15 HPC luminaries from around the globe.

The conference program starts on Sunday, June 19, with three full-day and eight half-day Tutorials. What makes these tutorials exceptionally interesting is that they are offered by  speakers with hands-on experience in HPC, and the topics themselves allow attendees to focus on diverse areas of interest, e.g., architectures, algorithm and analysis, large scale simulations, storage and data as well as developing areas like Exascale,  Clouds and CUDA. All 11 tutorials will be held in parallel sessions and the registration fee allow participants to visit all the sessions.

Asia recently astonished the global HPC community by providing three of the five fastest HPC installations worldwide. To allow a new and a bigger platform for these growing markets, ISC has organized a full-day HPC in Asia Workshop and invited experts from the most well-known HPC centers in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore to talk about the state-of-the-art developments in their regions. Among others, they will discuss current activities and projects in Asia in the “HPC Applications in Asia” and “Ultra Large Scale Systems in Asia” sessions. The day will end with a fascinating science tour of the German Climate Center (DKRZ) for all participants.  

Also on Sunday, the workshop on Mid Market HPC will provide specialized users with an overview of the available HPC solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises, and also facilitate a dialogue between users, technology companies, hardware vendors, ISV’s and service providers.

ISC’11 Conference Highlights, June 20 – 23, 2011
This year, a major focus will be given to HPC applications. Two sessions will concentrate on various application fields in science and industry, i.e., new developments in HPC and a special session about “Sustained Performance on Petascale Systems.”

Parallelization will also play an important role in this year’s program: “Parallelization Challenges and Efforts”,” How to Teach Parallel Programming for Millions of Cores” and “Parallelization of ISV’s Software Packages.”

Sessions like “Heterogeneous Systems and GPUs” and “Many-Core Computing – Challenges & Opportunities for HPC” will cover the technology of existing and future HPC systems, and their performance, power and programmability.

To address the hot topic of GPUs in HPC, ISC has organized an exciting debate between two international experts, Thomas Sterling of Louisiana State University and NVIDIA’s former chief scientist, David Kirk on “GPUs – The Fast Lane on the Road to Better Science?”

As Exascale computing can already be seen on the horizon, a panel discussion will look to the future on “What Can You Expect from Exascale Computing.” On the other hand, ISC attendees will also have the opportunity to hear globally acknowledged experts talk about the near future in “Transpeta Flop/s Initiatives” from the most important HPC regions worldwide.

Here is a selection of the invited sessions that’ll take place at ISC’11:

• 37^th TOP500 List of the world’s fastest supercomputers
• Addressing the (HPC) Data Challenges: Today & Tomorrow
• Storage & Memory Access – The Real Challenge for Future HPC Systems
• Cloud Computing & HPC (Virtualization)
• Parallelization of ISVs Software Packages
• Energy Exploitation & HPC
• How to Teach Parallel Programming for Millions of Cores
• State of the Art in Visualization
• Architecture & Networking
• Computational Biology & HPC
• Young & Bright HPC Researchers
• Closing Session with Analyst Crossfire

The new interactive ISC agenda planner will help participants to easily browse through the conference sessions.

Four Compelling Keynote Presentations
ISC’11 will feature four compelling keynote presentations focusing on an array of topics from using supercomputers to simulate the human brain to (amongst others) explore hypotheses of brain diseases as well as treatments, to the European desire to be technologically independent and capable of Exascale computing.

Famous brain scientist, Henry Markram will talk about  “Simulating the Human Brain – The Next Decisive Years”. Markram will introduce participants to the massive efforts of the 20^th century to understand the brain and its diseases.

Bull’s CEO, Philippe Vannier in “The Road To Exascale Computing – a European Challenge” will discuss why access to high performance computing resources is a key element in national competitiveness for the Europeans.  

Thomas Sterling, a regular speaker at ISC will share his views in a look at the past year and the current year in his talk “HPC Achievement & Impact – 2011.”

Dean A. Klein will in his lecture “Future Trends in Memory Systems: Showstopper or Performance Potential for HPC?” analyze the evolving role of memory in today’s computing architecture.

ISC’s strong-five day technical program with more than 200 expert speakers is further complimented by a number of additional events, including Research Poster and Research Paper Sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions, Exhibitor and Start-up Forums and the popular Hot Seat Sessions.

An Even Bigger and Better Exhibition
From June 20 to 22, the International Supercomputing Conference will also feature a world-class exhibition, the largest in its 26 years, with over 150 global players showcasing their latest products, services, solutions and research discoveries in HPC, networking and storage.

ISC’11 Offers Flexible Registration Options
Attendees can tailor their registration, using the flexible pricing system that allows registration for the entire program, or just a selection of days. Catering and evening events are included in the registration fees. Please register here.

ISC – The Networking Event in 2011
Last but not least it should be noted that the open atmosphere of camaraderie and friendship during the conference and the evening events give birth to great discussions, networking and collaborations at ISC. This is a great year to attend ISC.

Further information: www.isc11.org