HPC-AI 16 in Lugano

For those not busy preparing for the upcoming competition at ISC25, the opportunity presented itself to attend the 16th annual HPC-AI conference in Lugano. Organized by none other than Hussein Harake and Brian Sparks, we were generously provided entry by CSCS (Thank you CSCS!).

Over the course of Sunday the 6th, various RACKlette members made their way down to Lugano. Some went a bit earlier to enjoy a nice hike up the Monte San Salvatore, others arrived just in time for the customary Pizza dinner at Mary's. Of course this was followed by some ice cream as well.

On Monday, the conference started off strong with a talk about how to use AI on partial differential equations. We then got to listen to various topics, covering Software, Hardware, tradional HPC as well as machine lerning. Next to a delicious lunch, we also got to enjoy excellen coffee throughout the conference. The day concluded with a presentation by former RACKlette member Marcel, who talked about large-scale distributed GPU workloads.

Tuesday began with Professor Taras, who talked about Computational Biogeodynamics. We also had the privilege of talking to Do IT Now, who were eager to introduce themselves to young HPC students. In the evening, we then attended the very fancy and beautifully organized evening dinner at the Hotel Splendide Royal Lugano. We had the honor of having Torsten and his lovely wife sit at our table, and got to talk with him about what it's like to be a leading scientist in HPC. It was also refreshing to hear about him outside of science, and were very surprised to learn that he is an avid runner.

The dinner was concluded by a delicious dessert, and many fun pictures of progressively more and more CSCS people joining in.

The last day of the conference was kicked off with a fantastic talk by Professor Hoefler, who delved into the future of interconnects with UltraEthernet.

We also got to hear about OpenCHAMI, a cluster management system which we might use on our own clusters in the future. Wednesday afternoon, the conference concluded by announincing next years HPC-AI conference in Locarno. Since we had to wait a bit for our train, we made our way down to the lake to explore a bit of Lugano. We looked at the local art, and played some card games by the water before finally embarking on our train back home.

A big thank you again to CSCS and Hussein for inviting us, we learned many things and had lots of fun, and are looking forward to attending next year!