Research Technologies Attends the SC22 Conference

When you want to put your head together with other experts to get advice, it’s great to have 11,830 to choose from. UITS Research Technologies took full advantage at SC22, otherwise known as the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, held this year in Dallas, TX. 

The annual conference provides the leading technical program for professionals and students in the HPC community. The conference, which was held from November 13-18, featured 361 exhibit booths, one of them being the Research Technologies ongoing cooperative booth with Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. 

Beyond attending workshops and tutorials, members of the team had individual objectives during the conference. Ryan Duitman, Manager of Regulated Research, arrived several days earlier than the rest of the team to set up SciNet, a sophisticated and powerful volunteer-built network that supports all of the meetings and exhibits of the conference. Chris Reidy, Manager of Research Consulting, was on the lookout for new ideas to help expand Research Technologies services, for example, training opportunities and researcher programming support. 

This year, the team focused on supporting the RFP process for their next supercomputer to understand where technologies will be heading in the next year. “We had several briefings with vendors who have technology that interests us,” explained Reidy. “We spoke with several chip vendors like AMD and Intel, system vendors Lenovo and Penguin, and storage vendors like Qumulo, Vast and WekaIO. They’re always interested when there are large purchases on the table—we’re talking about millions of dollars.”

One of the more entertaining and popular features of SC22 was the swag. The RT team brought 900 light-up bouncy balls with their website branded on them (they were all given out) and returned with various t-shirts, beanies, socks, and pens. Unfortunately, they did not win the HPCWire Publications raffle for a new Harley Davidson motorcycle. 

“Most importantly,” Reidy mused, “we get to engage with our peers in the HPC community and talk about the cool things they are doing that we might replicate. We’re able build relationships that are useful for future collaborations. At the end of the day, we came back with ideas for our HPC center and for the RFP process and will be busy with a lot of follow up meetings.”