Why SC08?
Why should Concertant be interested in attending SC08 (or Supercomputing as it used to be known)? Concertant is after all a consultancy whose primary domain of activity lies in parallel and multicore computing.
Principally there are two reasons. The first is that today's HPC is tomorrow's commodity computing. Whereas we once used 500MHz processors to run our applications with ease, we are now using multicore processors running at around 2GHz. In most laptops, we are talking of processors with a couple of cores, in workstations there may be several dual-core or quad-core processors, servers are generally multiple quad-core systems. The power that these systems deliver would have easily qualified them as supercomputers in the none too distant past. The vehicles to deliver this level of computing performance are rapidly evolving and SC08 should provide a glimpse of what is coming soon.
Secondly, all the major processor and systems manufacturers are going to be represented and so SC08 is an opportunity to discuss future technologies. We are particularly interested in understanding software tools and seeing where the industry thinks it is going. Because the market expects processors to have core counts in the tens, and possibly in the hundreds, over the next five to ten years, the tools need to be there soon. These aren't going to arrive overnight, but we need to start to see them soon. If they don't, it is quite likely that the pace of the “multicore revolution” will be slowed by lack of appropriate software.
For Concertant – and for the readers of these pages – SC08 represents a potential view on the future. At the time of writing (10th November) there are some 265 exhibitors ranging from market leaders Cray to small start-ups, a number of workshops focusing on a variety of topics from supercomputing to “Bridging multicore's programmability gap” and, of course, the crown jewel that is the technical programs. We will be reporting on a selection of all of these as the event unfolds.
Keep watching these pages.