Thank you

Thank you all for such a wonderful experience. It was something that few people get to do, and I felt truly blessed to have Mr Blair and Harrison Cook with me for the ride. I doubt I shall ever forget the adventures we had and the people we met. Who knew boot shopping could be so much fun!

Thank you everyone!

Godspeed,
Travis

We also got a mention in HPC Wire of course

Australian Teens Pick Up Supercomputing Knowledge, Souvenirs on Trip to SC15

We made Scientific Computing!

Well it seems we are kind of famous! We made Scientific Computing...

Australian Teens Pick Up Supercomputing Knowledge, Souvenirs on Trip to SC15

Day 4: SC15

Today was one of those days where the sessions on offer at the SC conference all fall into place and the experience is magic. The boys have already mentioned two of the sessions so I'll focus on the other SC parts of our day.

We started with an Invited Talk session on the Quadrennial Technology Review presented by the Under Secretary for Science and Energy, Dr. Lynn Orr. He outlined the US Energy infrastructure and how it has changed over the past decades. He focussed on the effects of renewables on the grid and how HPC has changed the ability of the utility companies to pin-point service disruptions for faster response times. He also showed that the reducing cost of renewables and technologies like LEDs will mean a shift in the complexion of where energy is sourced in the future.

We also sat in on a session on big data visualisation. Professor Daniel Keim, Head of the Information Visualisation and Data Analysis Group at the university of Constant, Germany took us through many different, creative and informative visualisations of very big data, often visualised in real time. This means as the data if moving through networks, it is sampled and visualised in some way. His group have placed a number of their tools and visualisations on their website, http://www.visual-analytics.eu.

We had to leave the talk on HPC in fluid dynamics for movie making a little early for a talk from SGI on their new supercomputer technologies. Water-cooled, short connect systems so well designed they've almost eliminated the need for external cabling. Smart design for better performance and better cost effectiveness.

After our SGI tour, we were all treated to an excellent Chinese lunch by Nick Comono, Queensland Regional Manager, SGI.

This evening was the SC15 Technical Program Conference Reception. Nine stories of food, music and fun at the Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Home of the University of Texas Longhorns. Nachos, Enchilada, Tex Mex, Rice, Bar-B-Que Beef Brisket, Kransky with Slaw, Onion and Pickles - mmmmm. After dessert, I've decided to do a glucose tolerance test as soon as I arrive home!

There aren't any sessions tomorrow that suit our kids so we will be heading to Houston on a Greyhound Bus to visit the Space Centre. Watch our Travel blog - http://sc15travel.blogspot.com.au - for news on that adventure.
 
 

Lunch by SGI

Today we were treated to a lunch provided by SGI (Silcon Graphics International). SGI were the ones that gave us the money to make this trip a reality, and we are very grateful for that. We first were taken on a tour and a talk of their supercomputers that they sell on the market. They sell some really powerful computers to all over the world. They were kind enough to give us some tshirts and adapters. After that we went across the road to a Chinese place were we had a delicious lunch provided by SGI. We thanked them for everything afterwards.

Using supercomputers to simulate earthquakes

One of the talks we went to today was about how supercomputers are used to visualise maps of the effects of earthquakes. Thomas H. Jordan, University Professor and the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California was the speaker. He talked about how over the last few years they have increased the power of the programs and can now simulate on multiple levels, including sedimentary basins and all fault lines. The place they had simulated was the San Andreas fault line, they showed a really cool visualisation map with the waves and Richter scale. It was cool to see how supercomputers are being used to help in real life areas.

Special Effects

Today we listened to a talk about HPC in relation to movie special effects. It was all about how they need to use powerful supercomputers to model the physics that make particles in explosions or waves move realistically. It was very interesting, as the speaker mentioned that the effects for things such as liquids are not exactly life-like, and they are instead more gluggy than actual water. For truly realistic liquid effects, they tried modelling a real 3D plume of ink as it moved through water and then generated it in a simulation with Titan, the supercomputer. The result was almost identical, except that when it was played in an animation, the smoke cloud was separated into single pictures. The computer tried connecting the pictures, but as the smoke cloud had no easily identifiable points of reference the end result consisted of smoke that flickered and twisted, attempting to join the wrong parts of the 3D images with each other. The speaker concluded that until there is a technology similar to CGI used for actors that can be utilised to perfectly replicate water and the way it moves, finding a way to properly simulate realistic 'light' water will be very difficult, even with supercomputers.