3-7 December 2017
Velmoré Hotel Estate
Africa/Johannesburg timezone

Speakers & Workshops

Highlights of the 2017 National Conference

 

Plenary Speakers

 

 

 

Keynote Addresses

 

 

Workshops

 

Sunday 3 December

  • Introduction to HPC, Thomas Sterling and Matt Anderson, Indiana University 09:00-17:00

  • Intel Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning Workshop, Intel, 09:00-17:00

  • System administrator’s tools and techniques for user-facing software, Dr Kent Milfeld and Nicholas Thorne, TACC, 09:00-17:00

  • Introduction to Schrödinger’s drug discovery tools, Dr Stephan Ehrlich, Schrodinger GmbH 09:00-17:00

  • Big Data Meets HPC: Exploiting HPC Technologies for Accelerating Big Data Processing and Management, Dr. Xiaoyi Lu, 09:00-12:30

  • Parallel data visualization on Lengau, Charles Crosby, CHPC, 13:30-17:00

Thursday 7 December

  • CHPC Industry Engagement Meeting, Dr Werner Janse van Rensburg, CHPC, 09:00-12:30

  • Introduction to Parallel Computing with OpenMP, Dr. Kent Milfeld, TACC, 09:00-12:30

  • Microsoft AI "Amplifying human ingenuity, Mr. Francois Smith; Mr.  Kiernan Mike; Mr. Sallah Gabriel, Microsoft, 09:00-12:30

  • CHPC Induction Course, Kevin Colville, CHPC, 13:30-17:00

  • Using the open source CFD GUI in FreeCAD, Dr Johan Heyns, CSIR, 13:30-17:00

  • Setting Up Basic Molecular Dynamics (MD) Calculations at CHPC Using DL_POLY Code, Dr Sylvia Ledwaba and Mr Cliffton Masedi, University of Limpopo, 13:30-17:00

  • HPC configuration management using Puppet 5, Mr. Charl Moller, University of Stellenbosch, 09:00-17:00

  • Deep Learning training course: OpenPOWER and AI, Mr. Ganesan Narayanasamy, IBM, 09:00-17:00

Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions

  • CHPC PI and Users BoF, Dr Werner Janse van Rensburg, CHPC

  • HPC Education BoF, John Poole, CHPC

  • HPC Ecosystem BoF, Bryan Johnston, CHPC

  • Woman in HPC BoF, Regina Maphanga, CSIR

Special Sessions

  • Understanding and Customizing Storage Systems: General purpose storage systems aim to offer a least common denominator that works well enough for a variety of workloads. With inevitable failures and potential data loss at scale, it is important to understand what the chances are for data loss to minimize the probability. With this kind of knowledge, robust storage with interfaces customized to particular application requirements can be deployed. Through programmable storage systems interfaces, custom service features can be combined limiting overheads from unnecessary services. Using these tools, new kinds of storage services focused on data contents and quality of service requirements can be addressed. This session presents talks investigating understanding storage system component failures, programmable storage, and user-defined metadata services. Organiser: Jay Lofstead (SANDIA)
  • Industry Crossfire 2017 HPC Landscape and Technology Trends: As the exascale era approaches, the landscape of high performance computing is changing rapidly. The advent of AI and machine learning has emerged as a major influence in HPC system and component design, and has encouraged users to rethink their traditional workflows. TOP500 News Editor Michael Feldman will recap some of the most important developments in this area that took place over the last year and discuss the broader ramifications for the HPC community.Organiser: Michael Feldman (TOP500.org)

Note: this year the workshops start on Sunday 3 December and continue on Thursday 7 December. The conference main programme runs from Monday 4 December to Wednesday 6 December.