SC98 Report (Part I)

SC98: High Performance Networking and Computing was held in Orlando, Florida, in November, 1998, the 10th anniversary. SC98 is, as its subtitle indicates, one of the biggest conferences on supercomputers including parallel computers and high-performance networks, featuring more than 5,000 participants and a large-scale exhibition. (For details, visit .)

The exhibition included general exhibition by firms for promotion purposes and research exhibition by non-profit groups. In addition to the major U.S. computer manufacturers such as IBM, HP, Sun, and Compaq, the Japanese manufacturers like NEC, Hitachi, and Fujitsu are the regulars. There were many research exhibition booths as usual, taking up almost half the space of the floor. Universities and national research institutes in the U.S. and those from other countries such as the RWCP and ETL from Japan participated in research exhibition. This was the third opportunity for the RWCP to present research results since its first appearance at SC96.

Some consider research exhibition as cultural festivals. However, probably because research on cluster technology has become quite popular at universities and research institutes in recent years, latest R&D results from cluster-related technology were given in the research presentations and demonstrations, so we did not want to miss them.

The RWCP, for the third time in a row, took over a PC Cluster developed by the RWCP to give demonstrations together with research presentations. At this SC98, we took with us a 128-processor PC Cluster and a 32-processor Alpha Cluster for demonstrations. The RWC presentations were made using the PC Cluster from Tsukuba Research Center (TRC) as the core, along with research presentations by distributed laboratories from Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi, and GMD, as well as collaboration by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and TRC. From TRC, one technical presentation and three poster presentations had also been accepted in addition to the exhibition. Thus, RWCPｹs presentations at SC98 covered the whole of parallel exhibition and high-performance networks in line with the SC98 title, and were one of the biggest of all presentations as for research itself, second only to those made by corporations as for the scale of the booth.

At this SC98, I found that the research activities of the RWCP are becoming well-known world-wide. During the preparation phase, conference staff visited us to say ｳWe know youｹre doing good work, and weｹre looking forward to your presentations.ｲ And Prof. Larry Rudolph from MIT, a friend of mine, said ｳI have no chance to see the exhibition but your presentations are very famous.ｲ System software for the clusters developed by TRC could be seen in booths other than ours. In the booth of Los Alamos National Laboratory, RWCPｹs PC Cluster being used over a network was demonstrated (Photo 4), and in the booth of Alta Technology Corporation from the U.S., software developed by the RWCP was demonstrated on their Alpha Cluster (Photo 5).

Just after returning to Japan, we have received far more e-mail asking about our distributed software, probably due to our reputation at SC98. These indicate that RWCPｹs participation in SC98 achieved more than originally planned. At the review meeting in Japan, our participation in SC99 was mentioned. PC Cluster and Alpha Cluster used at SC98 returned home safe and sound, and are now working properly again. This encourages us to work harder at our research.

	Photo 1 Overall view of RWCP booth after preparation. It took whole three days to prepare because there were many things to exhibit.
Photo 2 Entire RWCP staff participating in SC98 in front of the RWCP booth. We had many things to exhibit from TRC and the distributed laboratories this time, so we had about 40 staff there! Presenters wore yellow jackets to distinguish them from visitors. The staff included those for preparation and taking video.
	Photo 3 The number of visitors varied depending on the time of day and events being held other than presentations. We were sometimes quite busy in giving explanations.
Photo 4 Panel shown in the booth of U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). It says that they are working together with RWCP. The RWCs mark can be seen in the upper right corner. The penguin on the panel is their logo for cluster research.
	Photo 5 Booth of Alta Technology, Corp. The rack in the center, slightly to the right, is their Alpha Cluster (left of some person); the display is demonstrating the RWC SCore cluster software.