Hello STEM-Trekkers! I would like to share my experience attending HPDC (ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing) for the first time, virtually, June 21-25, 2021. I also served as a chair for the PERMAVOST’21 workshop which was held during HPDC.

In its 30th year, HPDC is one of the most prestigious international conferences in the HPC field, and features the latest research on the design, implementation, evaluation, and use of parallel and distributed systems for high-end computing. This year, there were seven workshops and a tutorial.

Monday was workshop day for the P-RECS’21 – 4th Workshop on Practical Reproducible Evaluation of Computer Systems, with a great keynote by Tanu Malik (Associate Professor, DePaul University-US), who presented, “Artifact Description/Artifact Evaluation: A Reproducibility Bane or a Boon.” Her talk explained the reproducibility benefits of requiring Artifact Descriptions and Artifact Evaluations as part of the paper submission process. “Reproducibility is the process of obtaining consistent results in computational work where the same data inputs, software methods and code, and computing environment are used.” Reproducibility is key for scientific innovations in different technology areas. Every year more conferences are making efforts to accept only reproducible works.

Rosa M. Badia (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) received the HPDC Achievement Award. Dr. Badia’s presentation was titled, “Superscalar programming models: a perspective from Barcelona.” It was a very interesting presentation. I enjoy learning more about projects, HPC infrastructure, tools, and services used in different centers worldwide.

There was also an insightful paper presented at the Programming for Distributed and Accelerated Systems session. A shout-out to the Best Paper Award winner, “Jigsaw: A High-Utilization, Interference-Free Job Scheduler for Fat-Tree Clusters,” by Staci A. Smith and David K. Lowenthal (University of Arizona-US).

I was honored to serve as a chair for the 1st Workshop on Performance EngineeRing, Modelling, Analysis, and VisualizatiOn STrategy (PERMAVOST’21). PERMAVOST is about performance engineering, analysis, and visualization with the goal of bringing application developers and domain scientists together with performance tool developers. Included were a keynote speech, three paper presentations, and a discussion panel. The recorded sessions will soon be available here, and you will find the workshop proceedings here.

Thanks STEM-Trek and Elizabeth Leake, for the support to attend HPDC.