Conference Keynote
Kathy Yelick
Vice Chancellor for Research,
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Monday, May 13 from 9:15-10:15 am
BEYOND EXASCALE COMPUTING
The first generation of exascale computing systems are online, with powerful new application capabilities and system software. At the same time, demands for high performance computing continue to grow for more powerful simulations, adoption of machine learning methods, and huge data analysis problems arising for new instruments and increasingly ubiquitous data collection devices. In its broadest sense, computational science research is expanding beyond physical and life sciences into social sciences, public policy, and even the humanities.
With chip technology facing scaling limits and diminishing benefits of weak scaling, it will be increasingly difficult to meet these new demands. Disruptions in the computing marketplace, which include supply chain limitations, a shrinking set of system integrators, and the growing influence of cloud providers are changing underlying assumptions about how to acquire and deploy future supercomputers. At the same time there are discussions around cloud computing, specialized hardware, and the role of AI, both as a technique in science and as a driver of computing hardware and software.
In this talk I’ll present some of the findings of a US National Academies consensus report on the future of post-exascale computing, which states that business as usual will not be sufficient. I will also give my own perspectives on some of the challenges and opportunities faced by the research community.
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Kathy Yelick is the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also holds the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. She is also a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Yelick was Director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) from 2008 to 2012 and led the Computing Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2010 through 2019. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS).