Rice Hosts June DoD HPC Users Group Meeting

More than 400 scientists and engineers involved with the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) attended the eighth Users' Group Conference on June 1-5, 1998 at Rice University. Researchers not directly involved with the program but who use HPCMP resources also participated.

The HPCMP is providing defense scientists and engineers with enabling HPC technology critical to science and technology (S&T) and development, testing and evaluation (DT&E) of new weapons, and capabilities needed by tomorrow's warfighter. Researchers at CRPC sites Caltech, Rice, Syracuse University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Texas are lending their expertise to various components of the program.

The HPCMP established four Major Shared Resource Centers (MSRCs) to provide a broad range of HPC services to DoD laboratories, computational scientists, and DT&E centers. Thirteen distributed centers also were established to augment the MSRCs by leveraging the HPC expertise that exists at these sites for the benefit of the entire program and to address unique requirements that cannot be met at the MSRCs. The Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) is a high-speed network that links computational scientists and engineers at DoD laboratories and test centers with the high-end computing resources located at the DoD computational centers. The network provides high-speed communications supporting collaborative work environments.

The Common High Performance Computing Software Support Initiative (CHSSI) provides DoD computational scientists and engineers who perform critical weapons system design and force employment research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) with a unique set of applications codes designed to exploit advancements in scalable high-performance computing.

The Programming Environment and Training (PET) initiative, in which the CRPC is primarily involved, provides DoD users with expert HPC advice and support from the country's leading academic and industry experts. Collaborative support efforts include user training tailored to specific interests and needs, as well as software environments and tool development to provide a common, friendly look and feel across DoD sites and computer platforms.

The June 1998 Users Conference featured approximately 50 papers that addressed S&T and DT&E problems. Presenters discussed how the problems were approached, why particular resources were chosen to attack them, and the insights gained through their analysis and solutions. Researchers will also address the exploration and development of advanced simulation testbeds that incorporate real-time data streams, including details on parallelization, optimization, debugging, visualization, and portability.

On June 2, Rear Admiral Paul Gaffney, U.S.N. Chief of Naval Research, presented a keynote speech highlighting the role of HPC to support the 21st century warfighter. On June 3, CRPC Director Ken Kennedy, Co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on High Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and the Next Generation Internet, presented a keynote speech emphasizing current HPCC topics. Several additional plenary talks and panels covered experiences with differing queuing systems, the role of HPC in testing and evaluation, successes achieved to date through the PET program, and other topics.

For more information about the conference, contact Dr. Nahid Sidki at nsidki@hpcmo.hpc.mil or Stephen Schneller at steve@npt.nuwc.navy.mil, or see http://www.hpcmo.hpc.mil/ug97/. For more information about the DoD HPCMP, see http://www.hpcmo.hpc.mil/.

View the photo galleries of the DoD HPC Users Group Meeting:

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