The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently hosted its 20th annual user meeting, an event geared towards fostering collaboration and sharing progress within the high-performance computing community. With the highest turnout to date, the meeting hosted 170 registered attendees, according to a report by ORNL News. The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences auditorium was filled to the brim with 78 in-person attendees while others tuned in through a virtual setup.
The two-day agenda, crafted by Josh Cunningham, an IT project manager, and MacKenzie Bellimam, a project specialist, involved the OLCF user community closely in both planning and execution. "It's always a real pleasure for us to get this one-on-one time live with the users," Cunningham said in a statement obtained by ORNL News. These interactions enable direct troubleshooting and facilitate stronger ties within the user base.
During the gathering, updates were given on two of OLCF's technical accomplishments - Orion, the input/output subsystem, and Kronos, the new near-line storage facility. Notably, the upcoming Discovery system, slated for a 2028 launch, is expected to eclipse the capabilities of the current supercomputer, Frontier. This next-generation system was highlighted in an address by NCCS Director Arjun Shankar. Further coverage of the technological advancements was provided by ORNL News.
Attendees also delved into Quantum Computing User Program initiatives, which dovetails with a roadmap forging the integration of classical and quantum computing resources. A vivid showcase in the EVEREST visualization laboratory allowed researchers to interact with data generated on OLCF supercomputers. "The poster session was really awesome," Verónica Melesse Vergara, head of the HPC Operations Section for the NCCS, told ORNL News. "It shows the range of impact that we have."
The event also marked a significant moment for the OLCF community as it prepared to bid farewell to the Summit supercomputer, a fixture since 2018. A unique sendoff included Summit-themed cupcakes, and attendees commemorating the event with signatures on a piece of a Summit cabinet door. The machine, a workhorse that has delivered over 200 million node hours to researchers globally, is scheduled for decommissioning on Nov. 15, heralding the end of an era for OLCF's storied computational resource.
Finally, the OLCF User Group elections ushered in new voices to its board, with the addition of four members actively engaged in the scientific community. ORNL News reveals that the new members are Mia Li from the University of Oklahoma, Min Xu, and Sara Isbell from ORNL, and Steve de Bruyn Kops from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. These elections signify the importance of user representation in guiding the OLCF's trajectory toward future innovations in high-performance computing.
