By Marcus Bond, Southeast Missouri State University

This time to a dramatically larger conference than SC21. I must admit I enjoyed the coziness of SC21; the keynote in the tiered Ferrara Theater was especially memorable. With the regular SC crowd back in town this time, the keynote returned to its familiar setting…with overflow rooms.

The keynote by Thomas Koulopolous was an engaging and interesting take on the state and future of technology as well as its effect on human behavior. A particular pointed aspect of his talk dealt with older people adapting to technological changes — guilty as charged. This foreshadowed a discussion with a nephew at a holiday gathering the next week where I was quizzed about “the old days.” When was the first time you recorded your voice? (Dad’s portable cassette player circa 1974). When was the first time you went online? (Don’t know, but it involved dialing a number, waiting until you heard robots screaming on the other end, and putting the receiver in a special holder). What was the first computer game you played? (“Hunt the Wumpus”, but no video—just command line). This segued into a late-night discussion about things I have learned and observed at SC over the years: what types of computing do researchers do, what components are found in a data center, etc.

Having SC close to home is convenient, and having been in the area for over 30 years I feel I am pretty familiar with many of the attractions and neighborhoods in St. Louis. However, I was surprised to discover something totally new on this trip. Looking for a breakfast place, I came across the Kingside Diner decorated throughout in a chess theme. After stepping outside, I discovered it was next to the World Chess Hall of Fame. Across the street was the headquarters for the St. Louis Chess Club with a window sign declaring St. Louis the Chess Capital of the USA. I had no idea. I returned to tour the Chess HOF with fierce competitor Bryan Johnston (South Africa Centre for HPC); here we are in the photo, below, standing next to the world’s largest chess piece.

After the Student Cluster Competition informational sessions at SC25, I had the privilege of sticking around the exhibition floor past closing time and walked out as booths were being taken down. This was the one-time I thought I would get the behind-the-scenes look. But surprise! Since my colleagues and I gave talks at the Great Plains Network booth, we were blessed with Exhibitor badges that provided access to the floor during off hours. It was a new experience for me, breezing past security at the door to watch booths being setup. As the teeming masses were assembling outside for the Monday night gala, I had my own quiet preview of the floor and promotional items. Some booths were playing strictly by the rules, i.e. no promotional items before opening time, while others shouted, “Hey, would you like a T-shirt?”

I stepped out for the ribbon cutting where it was announced that this was the largest SC exhibition ever…and it certainly looked it.

Booths spilled out across the exhibition floor, even into the domed stadium attached to the convention center. SC worked to promote traffic to the far-flung areas of the exhibition hall by giving away SC promotional items twice a day at a far corner of the stadium and snacks twice a day at another far corner of the exhibition floor. I did not have a chance this year to explore the floor as much as I have in the past, partly because it was overwhelming. I did visit one booth that could patch my old CentOS 6 system so I might be allowed to put that back on the network — worth attending just for that. The stadium part of the floor had some interesting booths that were easy to miss if you didn’t make the trip. One of my favorites was the Pegasus Logistics Group booth which gave away the white gloves featured in the photo below as their promotional item. Although they really weren’t promoting much, they had transported equipment for many of the booths on the floor with care (hence, the “white glove” treatment) and were just chilling at their booth enjoying the show.

Since SC was in Missouri this year, regional folks had a very active booth under the aegis of the Great Plains Network. Normally there is one area GPN operates more as a social lounge with occasional talks. This year they kept the social lounge and added a speaking area with an extensive program of talks from the region in the Quantum Village. A drawing was held for a Lego set at the end of each talk, and at the conclusion of each program.

The program kicked off with a talk by David Miller from my university about his work with refurbishing donated hardware into usable clusters for local schools. The speaker booth had been placed in the Quantum Village because many of the talks showcased the Missouri Quantum Initiative and regional efforts in quantum computing. A good overview, in particular, was by Mickey Slimp of the GPN and Chip Byers of MOREnet. Lastly, a combined talk by the founders of the CIMUSE (Computational Infusion for Missouri Undergraduate Science and Education) consortium about their outreach activities to promote HPC among undergraduates. Below, during my portion of the talk….

and the CIMUSE consortium founders with our University of Missouri facilitators. From left, Phil Redmon (MU), Dr. Jeff Woodford (Missouri Western State University), me, Dr, Xiaoyuan Suo (Webster University), and Dr. Colin DeGraf (Truman State University).

Following Alan Edelman’s compelling presentation on the Julia language at a previous SC, I really had wanted to attend the Julia tutorial at SC24—but opted for the HPC Education workshop instead. This year the HPC Education workshop seemed to be more computer science oriented, so I opted to attend the Julia for HPC tutorial.

But surprise! There was a Julia hands-on presentation at the TANGO/CONGA pre-conference workshop that got me started. The workshop was preceded by a “jetlag” day program that was a whole conference day in itself. This was held at the old St. Louis Post Dispatch building downtown close to the convention center in the upcoming T-REX tech incubator district of which I was completely unaware. The building itself contained interesting relics of old printing presses and ephemera. I found the talks on geospatial analysis fascinating, especially in light of the talk I went to last year at the NASA booth on their geospatial programs (regrettably, no NASA booth this year due to the government shutdown).

At the Julia for HPC afternoon tutorial, Alan Edelman treated us to a compelling presentation on…the game of Craps! I’m more of a Blackjack person, but it appears there is more strategy with Craps than just rolling the dice. In any case, I was rolling dice with laptop battery issues but managed to get to power during the tutorial break and install Julia on my laptop so that I could play around with it on my own.

SC25 wound down with the Technical Program Reception at the St. Louis Science Center. Therein, I was most taken by this topographic model of the planet Mars with raised relief features.

I’ve seen parts of the planet’s surface in photos from orbiters and rovers, but never the whole planet in detail at once. And, in analogy to SC, the various details of contemporary HPC available in one spot.