Special guest and a leading light of the HPC community, Prof. Torsten Hoefler of ETH-Zurich, joins Shahin and Doug for a lively discussion (sponsored by Lenovo) on his vision of HPC-AI’s present and future, which he calls “The Age of Computation.”
For Torsten this is an umbrella term covering all technologies that accelerate supercomputing: interconnects, big memory, high performance storage and mostly, naturally, HPC-class chips. In supporting his theory, Torsten challenges the conventional wisdom that data is paramount.
We also delve into HPC-AI’s evolving infrastructure: data center power and cooling, the creative process for AI, model certainty for AI, AI and emergent behavior, and other HPC topics – including, incidentally, the “fairness” (or the unfairness, as you will) of HPC becoming overshadowed by AI despite AI’s reliance on HPC and all factors related to The Age of Computation (see also this presentation on his theme).
Torsten is a professor at ETH Zurich, where he directs the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory. He is also the chief architect for machine learning at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, as well as a consultant for Microsoft on large scale AI and networking. He also is a compelling speaker with a fascinating vision for advanced computing.
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