Nov. 10, 2020 — The Test of Time Award (ToTA) recognizes an outstanding paper that has deeply influenced the HPC discipline. It is a mark of historical impact and recognition that the paper has changed HPC trends. We are pleased to announce the selection of the SC02 paper, “An Overview of the Blue Gene/L Supercomputer” as the SC20 ToTA winner.

This work was the first peer-reviewed paper to disclose the Blue Gene/L system. For nearly a decade, the BG series won multiple TOP500 awards and Gordon Bell Prizes (including finalists) and served as a vehicle for many research publications. These papers included topics of node architectures, applications optimization, networks, system administration, fault-tolerance, power management, programming models, file systems, performance tools, and applications science. Additionally, Blue Gene/L was a precursor of the importance of energy-efficiency when it was not a recognized problem in the community, and it is now the dominant constraint for HPC architectures. This paper has had a tremendous and ongoing impact on the design of following supercomputers.

Jose Moreira was the System Software Architect for Blue Gene/L. He is currently a Distinguished Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, developing innovations for the POWER line of server processors.

Jeffrey S. Vetter continues to push the forefront of high performance computing as the Section Head for Advanced Computing System Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Drs. Moreira and Vetter will be presenting the work with several guest speakers joining.

View on SC20 schedule.

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Source: Amanda Randles, SC20 Committee