Panels

The SC08 Panels program aims to bring out the best, or at least the most interesting and challenging, ideas at the conference. Designed to promote discussion on large and small topics, panels bring together great thinkers, practitioners, and the occasional gadfly to present and debate various topics relevant to high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. Audience participation is always encouraged. Drop by a panel and enjoy the show.

This year's panels cover a range of topics, including many conference themes:

* Applications for Heterogeneous, Massively Parallel Systems
Tarek El-Ghazawi and leading lights in the software field ask (and maybe answer) the question, "Can Developing Applications for Massively Parallel Systems with Heterogeneous Processors Be Made Easy(er)?"

* Will Electric Utilities Give Away Supercomputers with the Purchase of a Power Contract?
Representatives from government, academia, and the computer industry consider this unique marketing ploy. Who comes out ahead on this deal - Dan Reed's data center, or Grand Coulee Dam?

* My Cloud, Your Cloud
Is cloud computing for real, or just more vaporware? Experts including Ian Foster and Tom Sterling debate the issue.

* SC Past and Future
A diverse panel of past SC General Chairs considers the past 20 years of Supercomputing (remember when that really was the name of the conference?) and makes its predictions for the next 20. Fun for both SC old hands and first-time attendees.

* Exa and Yotta Scale Data
Teraflop machines bred petabyte and larger data sets. Are we ready for what comes out of Petaflop machines? Bill Kramer and his panelists from government, industry and academia will tell us.

* The Hungry Music Monster
HPC will change the face of music. No, this isn't the plot of a 50's drive-in movie. It's real, it's here today, and this panel will tell you how it's happening.

* Weapons of Mass Disruption
This Disruptive Technologies Panel will examine HPC technological developments in several areas that have the potential to impact exascale systems in a very disruptive way. These "weapons" for building exascale systems could lead to viable systems in the 2015-2020 timeframe.

Questions: panels@info.supercomputing.org