DALLAS, June 14, 2022 — Jack J. Dongarra, long-time SC supporter and recipient of the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award, has chosen the SC22 Conference in Dallas, Texas for his award presentation. The award recognized Dongarra for his pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.

The ACM A.M. Turing Award Lecture will be at 9 a.m. CT on Tuesday, November 15, on the SC22 Main Stage in the Dallas Ballroom of the Omni Dallas Hotel and via the conference digital experience livestream. The lecture will replace SC’s traditional keynote presentation for this year.

Dongarra accelerated HPC

Dongarra is a University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee. He also holds appointments with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Manchester.

His trailblazing work stretches back to 1979. He has led the world of high-performance computing through his contributions to efficient numerical algorithms for linear algebra operations, parallel computing programming mechanisms, and performance evaluation tools.

For nearly 40 years, Moore’s Law produced exponential growth in hardware performance. During that same time, while most software failed to keep pace with these hardware advances, high performance numerical software did—in large part due to Dongarra’s algorithms, optimization techniques, and production-quality software implementations.

These contributions laid a framework from which scientists and engineers made important discoveries and game-changing innovations in areas including big data analytics, healthcare, renewable energy, weather prediction, genomics, and economics, to name a few. Dongarra’s work also helped facilitate leapfrog advances in computer architecture and supported revolutions in computer graphics and deep learning.

Dongarra’s initial contribution was in creating open-source software libraries and standards which employ linear algebra as an intermediate language that can be used by a wide variety of applications. These libraries have been written for single processors, parallel computers, multicore nodes, and multiple GPUs per node. His libraries also introduced many important innovations including autotuning, mixed precision arithmetic, and batch computations.

As a leading ambassador of HPC, Dongarra led the field in persuading hardware vendors to optimize these methods, and software developers to target his open-source libraries in their work. Ultimately, these efforts resulted in linear algebra-based software libraries achieving nearly universal adoption for high performance scientific and engineering computation on machines ranging from laptops to the world’s fastest supercomputers. These libraries were essential in the growth of the field—allowing progressively more powerful computers to solve computationally challenging problems.

Dongarra was instrumental in developing MPI (Message-Passing Interface), the portable interface for parallel programming that allows users to move their code from one HPC system to another. Also among Dongarra’s accomplishments is his collaborative work to create the Linpack benchmark and establish the Top500 List, a list of the world’s 500 most powerful machines. His work has touched every HPC computer and virtually every HPC application developed over the last couple of decades.

To learn more about SC22, please visit sc22.supercomputing.org. Conference registration opens on July 13.

About the ACM A.M. Turing Award

The A.M. Turing Award was named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing, and who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II. Since its inception in 1966, the Turing Award has honored the computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry. The award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” carries a $1 million prize, with financial support provided by Google, Inc.

About SC22

The annual SC Conference Series is sponsored by ACM and IEEE and has grown steadily in size and impact over time, often drawing more than 13,000 attendees. SC is held in a different city in the United States each year; this year SC22 will be held in Dallas, Texas, November 13-18. SC20 was the first virtual event due to the global pandemic; SC21 was a hybrid event, and SC22 will be in-person with a digital experience component. The Technical Program is the heart of the SC conference, addressing virtually every area of scientific and engineering research, as well as technological development and education and inspiring innovative ideas in the field of HPC. SC has built a diverse community of participants, making it a yearly “must attend” forum for stakeholders throughout the technical computing community.

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

About IEEE Computer Society

The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s home for computer science, engineering, and technology. A global leader in providing access to computer science research, analysis, and information, the IEEE Computer Society offers a comprehensive array of unmatched products, services, and opportunities for individuals at all stages of their professional careers. Known as the premier organization that empowers the people who drive technology, its unparalleled resources include international conferences, peer-reviewed publications, a unique digital library, standards, and training programs. Visit www.computer.org for more information.

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Source: ACM