HPC Status Conference 2024 at TU Dresden

High-performance and supercomputing in Germany

From April 24 to 26, 2024, the Gauß-Allianz and the ZIH, in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), are organizing the annual HPC Status Conference on High Performance Computing in Germany on the TU Dresden campus. The three-day program with around 40 speakers addresses current issues, projects and trends in supercomputing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). It also serves as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange and networking on these important topics.

In addition to overarching developments such as questions of coordination within the community, as pursued by the Gauß-Allianz e.V. – in close cooperation between the members also within the NHR network (National High-Performance Computing) and the NFDI projekts and consortia (National Research Data Infrastructure) – the focus of the event is also on concrete current research projects as well as questions, requirements and approaches to solutions in this range of topics at the computing centers of the Gauß-Allianz members.

The CDIO of TU Dresden, Prof. Dr. Lars Bernard, welcomed the conference participants to TU Dresden with the words: "High and supercomputing is enormously important," and added: "... for a long time - but today increasingly with comprehensive requirements for intelligent and sustainable HPC. This is precisely where we need the excellent, combined expertise of the NHR and the Gauss Alliance".

The agenda combines presentations on funding policy goals and strategies from the BMBF, the NHR Association and the NFDI management as well as topics of current research and development from the fields of computational science, data science and data analytics to various application areas such as biomedical research, medical drug development or climate research. The first results of national projects from the BMBF measures SCALEXA and GreenHPC, which are funded as part of the program "High Performance Computing for the Digital Age 2021 to 2024 - Research and Investment in High-Performance Computing", will be presented, as will the numerous references to AI research. Experiences and approaches to infrastructures, methods and applications in HPC are thus directly linked to research efforts in the field of language models or the role of open source in artificial intelligence.

"We have learned over decades that in many scientific fields, the mere availability of high-performance computing does not guarantee scientific success and breakthroughs. Cross-disciplinary collaboration with expertise in modeling and simulation, data analytics and the use of innovative artificial intelligence methods are other essential ingredients. Our conference addresses the important, overarching topics. Collaboration in these fields - supported by powerful HPC systems - will be decisive for strategic success in the German scientific landscape," emphasizes Prof. Dr. Wolfgang E. Nagel, Chairman of the Board of the Gauss Alliance, founded in 2008, and Director of the CIDS – Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences, to which the ZIH at TU Dresden also belongs.

The program section on current developments and challenges in the field of AI will be organized at the HPC status conference by the Saxon Competence Center ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig in close coordination with the other national AI competence centers.

GA-Statuskonferenz 2024