On The Road
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| The spacious exhibit showroom of the Phoenix Convention Center. |
ARL MSRC participates in SC2003
By Ric Kositzke, Managing Editor
It’s an hour after dawn in downtown Phoenix and the Laptop Crew–those supercomputer junkies who can’t seem to leave home without their portable computers–begin to filter through the concrete entrance-hiding maze that greets visitors to the Phoenix Convention Center.
Soon, instead of typing or clicking on their diversion devices, the impatient throng will walk through the doors of the 2003 Supercomputing Conference (SC03) and witness presentations and exhibits of the latest developments in information architectures, data storage, analysis and other supercomputer-related fields.
The Nov. 17-20 conference's clientele represented a cross-section of academia, government and commercial representatives. Locally, ARL MSRC members Charles J. Nietubicz, Denice Brown, Prabu Prabhakaran, Mike McCraney, Tom Kendall, Roy Campbell, Tom Crimmins, Tom Kile, Mike Knowles, Warren Birch, Ken Brice, Brandon Hake and the Outreach Team, which helped the High Performance Computing Modernization Program perform exhibit duty, attended the conference to witness firsthand the newest technologies in supercomputing.
"We feel that participating in the SC03 is an integral part of our ability to satisfy customer needs balanced with industry, government and academic capabilities,” said Nietubicz, ARL MSRC Director. “The Phoenix conference was definitely one of their best ever.”
The High Performance Computing Modernization Program’s exhibit, led by the NAVO MSRC, featured representatives and reference material from the ARL MSRC, the Aeronautical Systems Center Major Shared Resource Center, the Engineer Research and Development Center Major Shared Resource Center, the Naval Oceanographic Office Major Shared Resource, who constructed the booth, and numerous distributed centers.
According to SC03 officials, 7,641 registered attendees came to the conference, 300 more than SC02, which was held in Baltimore. Moreover, attendees came from 43 countries, accounting for 16 percent of the attendance at the conference.
The exhibition featured 219 industry and research booths, covering 99,250 square feet in the center. The conference also included a four-day technical program and an extensive exhibition, which drew 2,390 paid participants, passing the previous record of 2,192 set in Baltimore.
This year the show will run from Nov. 6-12 in Pittsburgh at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Visit www.sc-conference.org for more information on this year's show.