It may seem like just a moment since ISC 2022 wrapped up in Hamburg, but get ready: as of today, registration is open for SC22. The conference will be held in Dallas, Texas, from November 13-18, 2022. Early registration closes October 14. To register for SC22, click here.

SC22’s general chair is Candace Culhane, program and project director at Los Alamos National Laboratory (and a 2022 HPCwire Person to Watch), and the theme for the conference is “HPC Accelerates”.

“The theme of HPC Accelerates is meant to capture the dizzying pace we are all working at these days,” Culhane told HPCwire earlier this year. “The application of big systems and new software stacks is answering questions and crunching data faster than ever before, and anyone who works in this field knows that this trend is going to continue to accelerate all around us.” The theme also, of course, refers to the rise of accelerators both familiar and novel in the HPC space.

SC22 will be an interesting conference to follow as the HPC event space works to regain its footing in the wake of pandemic-driven cancellations and logistical difficulties. Denver’s SC19 saw the conference’s largest attendee numbers ever at around 14,000; SC20, of course, was fully online, hosting around 7,400 virtual attendees; and SC21 was one of the first large events in the HPC space to return to a partially in-person format, trying to strike a hybrid balance between in-person and virtual attendance and landing at around 6,600 attendees, 3,200 of those in physical attendance.

ISC, meanwhile, has perhaps gained some ground: it, too, recorded record attendees in 2019 at around 3,600 — and then recorded over 3,000 visitors this June in its first in-person showing since 2019, less than a 20 percent drop from its peak. ISC 2022 was, however, shaken by a spate of last-minute Covid infections at the conference, which caused serious disruption and frustration among attendees as they recovered and worked to travel home. In the wake of ISC 2022, HPCwire published an op-ed calling for more thorough Covid measures at large HPC conferences.

SC22, to its credit, appears to be approaching Covid measures with a degree more caution than ISC 2022 (which did not require proof of vaccination or masks, save for a mask requirement in the keynote hall). SC21 had required both proof of vaccination and general masking; SC22, despite its location in Texas — which is generally hostile to vaccination requirements — will retain the vaccination requirement, but the conference says that “masks — properly worn covering both nose and mouth — are strongly encouraged but, at this time, are not required.” To comply with the vaccination requirement, U.S. attendees are encouraged to use the CLEAR app; all others (or those choosing not to use the CLEAR app) will need to bring an original, copy or photo of a government-issued document proving vaccination.

The conference will be hosted at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center (pictured in the header), which also hosted SC in 2000 and 2018. SC22-affiliated hotel reservations opened on June 1 and will remain open until October 12 (with late requests possible, but not guaranteed, through the 17th). Again, to register for SC22, click here.