Tech Conferences Are Being Canceled Due to Coronavirus

By Alex Woodie

March 3, 2020

Several conferences scheduled to take place in the coming weeks, including Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) and the Strata Data + AI conference, have been canceled due to fears of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Many of these events have been transformed to online, or virtual, events to stem the spread of the contagious virus. The Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, however, is still scheduled to take place later this month.

“As the coronavirus situation is not improving, we’re turning GTC San Jose into a digital conference rather than a live event,” an Nvidia spokesperson wrote in an email today to journalists planning on covering the event. “Jensen [Huang, the CEO] will still give a keynote. We will still share our announcements. And we’ll work to ensure our speakers can share their talks. But we’ll do this all online.”

GTC 2020 has been turned into a virtual event

Nvidia will issue full refunds to folks who purchased admission to the event, which was scheduled to take place March 23 – March 26 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

On February 28, the Open Compute Project Foundation canceled the OCP Global Summit, which had been scheduled to start on March 3 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. It has been rescheduled as a virtual event for the week of May 11. The organization issued the following statement:

“Due to the fact that the World Health Organization today increased the assessment of the risk of spread and impact of COVID-19 to very high at the global level, and additional cases reported in key regions including Santa Clara County (California), the Open Compute Project Foundation has decided to cancel the OCP Global Summit next week.” The cancelation also covers two related events, the Future Technology Symposium and the Open System Firmware Hack event.

The analytics firm Domo similarly cancelled the upcoming Domopalooza 2020 event, which had been scheduled to take place March 18 and March 19 in Salt Lake City, Utah. “…[I]n taking steps to minimize the risk of COVID-19, we’re transforming Domopalooza 2020 into an event that is 100% online,” the company said. The keynotes, general sessions, customer stories, and breakout sessions will all be accessed over the Internet.

Adobe has also cancelled its physical Adobe Summit event, scheduled for March 29 – April 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and has transformed it into a virtual event. “Over the past few weeks, we have been closely monitoring and evaluating the situation around COVID-19 to ensure we are taking the necessary measures to protect the health and well-being of Adobe Summit attendees,” the company wrote. “As a result, we have made the difficult but important decision to make Adobe Summit 2020 an online event this year and to cancel the live event in Las Vegas.”

Google Cloud also cancelled its upcoming event, Google Cloud Next ’20, which was slated to take place April 6 -8 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. “Due to the growing concern around the coronavirus (COVID-19), and in alignment with the best practices laid out by the CDC, WHO and other relevant entities, Google Cloud has decided to reimagine Google Cloud Next ’20,” the company states on its website.

Microsoft has also cancelled the physical Microsoft MVP Global Summit, scheduled for March 15 –  March 20 in the Redmond, Washington area and made it an online-only affair.

Tabor Communications, the parent company of Datanami, has postponed the HPC & AI on Wall Street event that was scheduled to take place in Singapore on April 14 and 15. It has been rescheduled for 2021. The HPC & AI on Wall Street New York event is scheduled to take place September 14 and 15.

“We made the decision to reschedule our Singapore event in late February, nearly 60 days before its scheduled date,” Tabor Communications CEO Tom Tabor says. “We were closely monitoring the developments of the virus and realized the upward trend of this situation was not slowing in the APAC geo. Rather than put our attendees, sponsors and staff at risk, we made the decision to re-schedule the event to early Spring 2021.”

Red Hat had scheduled its Red Hat Summit to take place April 28 and 29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. But due to the coronavirus, it decided on March 3 to turn it into a virtual event.  “The safety and well-being of Red Hat Summit attendees is our top priority…,” the company says on its event website.

On Tuesday (March 3), O’Reilly Media decided to cancel the Strata Data & AI Conference, which was scheduled to be held March 15 – 19 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

“Due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve decided to postpone O’Reilly Strata Data & AI 2020 in San Jose,” O’Reilly Media said via email. “We’ve been working to keep the event moving forward over the course of the last few weeks because we’re excited about convening the data science and AI communities in such a unique new way. But an abundance of caution and our belief in putting people first has shifted our resolve. “

The analytics company SAS has elected to cancel its SAS Global Forum, which was scheduled to take place from March 29 to April 1 in Washington, DC. A company spokesperson says the company is planning on turning it into a virtual conference.

DataStax, the commercial venture behind the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, has canceled two upcoming Accelerate 2020 conferences, including one slated for San Diego from May 11 -13 and one slated for London June 2 and 3. The company is exploring ways to hold the events online.

On Friday (March 6), Dell Technologies announced that it was canceling its Dell Technologies HPC Community Meeting, which was scheduled for March 9-12 in Austin, Texas.

Conferences Still Planned

The Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, which is scheduled to take place March 23 – 26 near Dallas, Texas, is still going ahead at this point. “We are closely monitoring and assessing new developments pertaining to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), including World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and regional and national government directives and guidance,” the company states on its conference website.

Flink Forward North America will also go ahead as planned in San Francisco from March 23 through 25. Ververica, the company behind the Apache Flink data streaming framework, expects more than 500 people to attend the event, which will take place at the Hyatt Regency hotel. Enterprise Data World is also planning to host more than 1,000 people at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego from March 22 to 27.

The global HPC community will still come together at the upcoming ISC show, which is scheduled to take place from June 21-25 in Frankfurt, Germany.  “…[W]e are monitoring the situation closely,” the ISC says on its website. “At this point we are optimistic and are preparing to host another successful conference and exhibition…”

Neo4j has made no announcement regarding changes to its upcoming GraphConnect event, which is scheduled to take place April 20-22 in New York. Similarly, there are no changes to the Kafka Summit event that Confluent has scheduled to take place in London April 27 and 28.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include more recent event data from Tabor Communications, O’Reilly Media, Dell Technologies, Red Hat, SAS, DataStax, and ISC.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire