News

DOE's Reis and Weigand to Headline 2010 DICE Alliance

DICE Conference to be held in conjunction with HPC User Forum

02/16/10

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO (February 16, 2010) – Two top officials for the U.S. Department of Energy’s  (DOE) Office of Science and its largest national laboratory will present the keynote presentations for the Data Intensive Computing Environment’s DICE Alliance 2010 Conference for High Performance Computing (HPC) April 14 and 15 in Dearborn, Mich. at the historic Dearborn Inn. Victor H. Reis, Senior Advisor, Office of the Undersecretary of Energy for Science, and Dr. Gil Weigand, Director of Strategic Programs in the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will discuss the future of and advancements in HPC and share insights gained through national laboratory system.

“Both data centers and vendors in HPC look to the DOE and laboratory system for direction on the future of advanced scientific computing,” said Al Stutz, Chief Information Officer for Avetec, the DICE Program’s non-profit home. “We are pleased to be able to provide a glimpse into the strategic direction from their leadership at both the big-picture and technical levels. These two outstanding keynote speakers and other expert speakers will focus on practical solutions and applications in power and cooling, parallel files systems, resource efficiencies and more.” 

DICE Alliance will be held in conjunction with IDC’s HPC User Forum, which will be held on April 13 and 14. DICE Alliance is focused on addressing the many challenges the HPC industry faces today. The conference theme for 2010 is “Crossing Over to Next Generation Solutions: Power Consumption and the Impending Limit.”  A special combined event with the HPC User Forum will be held on Wednesday, April 14 with a reception and dinner at the Henry Ford Museum. 

“By partnering with the HPC User Forum, we have heightened opportunities and expanded the invitation to draw leaders from all over the U.S. including industry, academia and government,” said Roger Panton, DICE Executive Director. “Two great, back-to-back conferences in one location provide synergy and help reduce travel costs for participants.”

At 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 15, Victor H. Reis, Senior Advisor, Office of the Undersecretary of Energy for Science, will kick off DICE Alliance with his presentation, “HPC and the Department of Energy: Prospects for Energy Applications.” Reis will present an overview of the DOE’s broad-based strategic review of how to best continue its leadership in HPC and how to extend this role to energy applications. The DOE, through its laboratory system, has been a major user of HPC dating back to the Atomic Energy Commission. More recently DOE’s HPC use has been focused through the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (now Advanced Simulation & Computing), SciDAC and ACR/INCIT programs. At DOE, Reis is currently working on a broad range of departmental strategic issues. He is a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the U.S. Strategic Command. He returned to the DOE in 2005 to help start the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and was Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy.

Dr. Gil Weigand, Director of Strategic Programs in the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will keynote the afternoon sessions with his presentation, “Net Zero Neighborhoods,” in which he will discuss U.S. trends for energy use and how they threaten the economy, environment and energy security, and how they ultimately challenge national security and American competitiveness. Weigand develops initiatives at Oak Ridge that integrate and focus science and technology on global challenges in energy, environment and national security.

DICE Alliance brings insights and methods from industry leaders to address the critical issues and innovations facing the HPC community – from data management to power and cooling efficiencies and parallel file systems to HPC advancements in manufacturing, and more.

The sponsor of DICE Alliance, DICE, the Data Intensive Computing Environment, helps vendor and data center customers optimize technology investments and transform innovations into proven and verified products and services, thereby reducing risk and time-to-solution for High Performance Computing (HPC) and Information Technology (IT) challenges. 

To see the complete schedule and session abstracts or to register for DICE Alliance, go to http://www.diceprogram.org and click on Register Now. For more information on how to exhibitor or sponsor DA10, contact Mike Madero at 937-322-5000, ext. 2004 or mmadero@avetec.org.