ISC keynotes focus on lean brain management, next generation HPC, and more

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The 2009 International Supercomputing Conference (held this year June 23-26 in Hamburg, Germany) has announced its slate of four keynote addresses

Tuesday, June 23: Andreas “Andy” von Bechtolsheim, the legendary co-founder of Sun Microsystems and founder and Chief Development Officer of Arista Networks will discuss “The Evolution of Interconnects for High Performance Computing.” In his presentation, von Bechtolsheim will discuss trends in the high performance computation market, including the challenge of building large fabrics and the role of InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Wednesday, June 24: Prof. Dr. Thomas Sterling, the Arnaud & Edwards Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University, will share his views in a look at the past year – a topic that has become an ISC tradition. In his talk “HPC Achievement & Impact – 2009,” Sterling will examine the beginning of the Petaflops Era.

Thursday, June 25: Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck, Chief Technologist & Distinguished Engineer at IBM in Germany,” will give a sure-to-be remembered talk on “Lean Brain Management – More Success & Efficiency by Saving Intelligence.” In it, Dueck advocates a new cold-blooded view on the use of intelligence or skill at work. We observe with utmost concern, for instance, pharmacists with a Ph.D. selling aspirin, or IT-gurus showing inexperienced users how to shut down computers instead of just turning off the power switch. A closer look reveals that most of the brain work is used for fixing broken business processes at work.

Friday, June 26: Prof. Dr. Edgar Körner, President, of the Honda Research Institute Europe in Germany, will discuss “The Brain-Like Vision.” According to Körner, “Understanding essential principles of how the brain organizes behavior may enable us to provide our technical artifacts at least with some aspects of brain-like intelligence.

You can find out more about the ISC’09 conference program, including the keynote sessions, at the web site.