LEIPZIG, Germany — The 2013 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’13) concluded its 28th meeting last week drawing 2, 423 attendees as well as 153 leading high performance computing vendors and research organizations from around the world to the Leipzig Congress Center.
Since it was first held as a seminar with 81 participants in 1986, the conference has become Europe’s largest and world’s second most significant HPC event. This year the conference drew participants from 47 nations. The format of the conference program has also evolved and this year’s blend of industry and technical tracks, keynote talks, panel discussions and specialized presentations generated many compliments – not to mention large audiences, including international media interest. About 70 journalists, analysts, national and international broadcasting agencies covered HPC, as well as topics that interest the general public, such as the human brain research, TOP500 and HPC for the masses.
“Having 2,423 attendees at a new location was very gratifying,” said ISC Executive Director Martin Meuer. “It would have been even more rewarding if we could have met all attendee requirements. Unfortunately some elements, like the extreme warm weather and delay in travels into and out of Leipzig due to the recent flooding worked against us. We truly apologize for the inconveniences.”
“We will see to it that the Congress Center Leipzig improves its air-conditioning within the conference center and the exhibition hall in 2014,” continued Meuer. “And, hopefully the Berlin international airport will be ready in time for our attendees.”
The opening of the new airport has been delayed to October 2013 due to an internal fiasco which only became public sometime last year, after the ISC organizers had finalized their move to Leipzig. In 2014, the travel to Leipzig will be more convenient since international travelers will be able to travel directly to Berlin from their home countries.
On a more positive note, it was exciting to see so many members of the HPC community in Asia make the trip to ISC’13. Over 260 attendees came from Asia and South Africa sent 35 attendees including six participants of the ISC’13 Student Cluster Challenge.
In fact, it was the group of students from South Africa who were the overall winners of the Student Cluster Competition. Eight teams of students competed to build and configure cluster computers, then run a series of applications to see which team could get the best performance. The three-day competition was sponsored by the HPC Advisory Council and Airbus. Here are the winners:
- Best LINPACK: Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China)
- Fan Favorite: Tecnológico de Costa Rica (Costa Rica)
- Overall Winner: Centre for High Performance Computing (South Africa)
Three teams reached over 8 teraflops during the LINPACK runs, which was a new Student Cluster Challenge record. Full information is available here.
High-quality images of the five day conference and exhibition are available for download at http://www.flickr.com/photos/64094857@N04/.
ISC’14 will be held June 22-26, 2014 in Leipzig. For more information, go to www.isc14.org.
About ISC’14
ISC is the world’s oldest and the most significant high-performance computing conference and exhibition in Europe for the global HPC community. It offers a strong five-day technical program with a wide range of expert speakers and exhibits from leading research centers and vendors. A number of events complement the conference and industry tracks including Tutorials, Workshops, Panels, announcement of the latest TOP500 list, Research Paper Sessions, Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions, Research Poster Session, Student Cluster Competition, Exhibitor Forums, and the popular Vendor Showdown in a new format featuring leaders from industry and research centers and a number of satellite events organized by our partners and sponsors in conjunction with ISC’14.
