RCC and UQ sponsored four Queensland Academy for Science, Mathematics and Technology (QASMT) Year 10 students to attend SC18, the world’s largest supercomputing conference, held in Dallas, Texas, 11–16 November 2018. Below is a report about their experience.
By Miriam Ahmed, Kiara Meier, Ramit Grover and Ajay Venkat
The Supercomputing Conference was an amazing example of what humanity has and will accomplish in the future in terms of computing. It showcased the latest technology in supercomputers, data analysis and storage, and how supercomputers help solve issues for both companies and humanity.
Throughout the conference, many influential speakers talked about the applications of this technology as well as technical ‘under-the-hood’ explanations.
One of the key elements of the conference was the exhibits, allowing us to network with experts from industry and top academics. Everyone was extremely welcoming to their exhibits and were very concise and clear in explaining their topics.
The entire conference was not just all serious knowledge-sharing; there were many fun and interesting aspects, such as raffles and prize giveaways on the exhibition floor.
The supercomputing community is wonderful and the technology is mind-blowing. Overall the conference was extremely inspirational and each day was a pleasure to attend.
Kiara’s outlook on Day 1: Talks kicked off with the Computing in Everyday Things
Our conference experience kick-started with a keynote by Prof. Thomas Lange about the computing hidden in everyday things. It was a great introduction to high-performance computing (HPC) as we learnt about the importance of simulations, which are used for the development of our everyday products.
I was fascinated by the complex simulations that go behind simple supermarket products and packaging. For example, Tide washing pods are strictly tested using HPC simulations to ensure the liquid within the pod is evenly distributed for each wash—not too much and not too little. To test this, Tide has two options to consider; either test this physically, or simulate this.
The advantages of simulations are phenomenal as it enables a business to significantly reduce costs and resources for the trialling stage.
As Prof. Lange stated, “Simulating enables us to explore digitally and confirm physically.”
For companies with high production costs, such as car companies, the simulation capability already has had a huge influence in the development and testing stage.
Instead of physically crashing a car to test safety measures, car companies use a supercomputer to simulate this.
Another fascinating example, and personally one of my favourites, is using HPC to simulate fluid dynamics on a Pringle chip so that the Pringle doesn’t fly off the conveyer belt during production. Something you don’t even think twice about! A product so simple, yet the technology required is so complex and requires massive amounts of computing power.
It is amazing to see the impact HPC has already had on the business sector, and I’m excited to see where HPC will lead us next, and hopefully I’ll be a part of it.
Mariam’s outlook on plenary session ‘HPC Inspires’
My favourite part of the conference was the plenary talk called ‘HPC Inspires’, about the ways HPCs can solve the important problems of today’s world.
An inspiring talk by Prof. Evan Fraser focused on how we can feed the future as population continues to rise exponentially and climate change decreases the amount of fertile farming land.
Prof. Fraser is a leading member of Global Food Security. He spoke about two ways HPCs are impacting agriculture:
- Through more efficient farming, using robots to provide nutrients needed for each plant, resulting in extreme precision and less wastage of resources. This results in more food produced while using less land and fewer inputs.
- By improving humanitarian food aid by integrating medical and satellite information so those who need help the most can get it faster.
Dr Robert S. Hart, another presenter, spoke about the control of infectious diseases using simulations. This topic was the most interesting for me because of the medical applications.
Dr Hart is the Vice-President of the Institute for Disease Modelling (IDM). One of the projects they are working on is the control of malaria in Madagascar, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
They created realistic models to simulate people, communities and the mosquitos in incredible detail, down to a mosquito’s life, travel and feed cycle. As a result of this disease surveillance, they noticed that mosquitos fed mainly in the night and so they introduced bed nets to the Madagascan communities as protection.
These presentations opened my eyes to the importance of HPCs and the scale of the problems that we are tackling with this technology.
Ramit and Ajay’s SC18 experience
Day 1 (Monday)
Our very first talk at the supercomputing conference was “Computing in Everyday Things”. It was one of those talks where you get to know about how the things that we think are “low tech” are not necessarily easy to manufacture and make.
A good example of this is toilet paper: We might neglect it in our day to day lives, but it is actually very fascinating to know that toilet paper is made through one of the most advanced manufacturing processes. Therefore, we shouldn't consider that something is high tech or low tech by its use, but should consider how it is made as well.
Another important thing that we learned in this particular talk was that when we are selling something, we need to focus on the purpose of the product or the service and not the product itself.
Lastly, we also got to know how transport was very essential for the growth of a business or that of a nation.
Day 2 (Tuesday)
Day two was mainly exploring exhibitions, however, there was an extremely interesting talk given about companies and HPC. It was a talk that informed the audience about three core concepts: mind connects to machine, product connects to platform, core connects to crowd.
It explains how all big companies are platforms, something that is a multi-connected network, and there are always two sides to the platform and both ends get benefits. For example, app developers and app users—one doesn’t exist without the other and they keep adding benefits to each other.
It was a great talk where we learnt more about how to make a successful business by using the crowd (crowdsourcing) to help you build better and bigger algorithms that can achieve the goals you want in a more optimised fashion.
One study presented, showed that people can come up with nearly 200 per cent better solutions than the companies themselves, because of people’s different outlooks and ways of thinking around the world.
Day 3 (Wednesday)
On Wednesday, the most interesting talk was on HPC applications with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Most of the talk was spent explaining the different processes of setting up networks correctly so that they can perform the best way possible. The speaker explained how to think about your data correctly, and picking the correct topology for the network.
The most interesting part of the presentation was the applications of simulations controlled through machine learning via parameter tuning.
The speaker also talked about model optimisation and the balance between the number of parameters and the amount of data points you give a network, and how overloading a network with one of these can be bad, and you have to find the good middle-ground between the two.
He also mentioned the different training techniques that can be used and what their different use cases are, such as Continuous Training, Cadence Training, Delta Training, One-Time Training and Throughput Training.
Day 4 (Thursday)
Day 4 was a very free day to go around and attend whatever talks we wanted. The first talk we listened to was called ‘AI at the Edge’. The speaker talked about how you can bring supercomputers to the points where data is being collected in massive amounts to speed up the processing time, and explained why edge computation is important as now processes are not latency bound and they only run as fast as the computers. One of the major applications of this type of technology is autonomous cars, as they need to have on-board computing power in order to make decisions quickly.
Two talks from Lenovo outlined their advances in artificial intelligence over the past few years as they have been working on technology such as fall detection and prevention using smartphones through analysing the behaviour of the users in order to predict their chance of falling. Other things they have been working on include using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to predict if a coffee bean is good or bad, and actively using this in factories to sort them.
Ajay and Ramit’s personal reflection, by Ajay Venkat
The whole Supercomputing Conference was an eye-opening experience in terms of technical knowledge, life experience and inspiration to pursue a career in computer science when we grow up.
Experiencing America and its culture was also very motivational, but the most valuable part of the entire experience lay inside all the networking that both myself and Ramit did.
Overall, the trip taught us many life skills, gave us many new friends and influential contacts and improved our social skills a lot.
We spent a lot of the time talking to people everywhere we went and picking their brains on their vast knowledge. We got over the fear of looking like we don’t know much and understood that in order to learn we must communicate with people smarter than ourselves.
We gained many contacts and friends throughout the entire trip, and this—along with all the gifts we received, the beautiful places we visited, and the American culture—all added up to be one of the most inspirational and influential weeks of my life. It taught me how to be more independent, manage my time efficiently and improve my social skills.
Many of the people that we networked with went to the universities that we aspire to go to, so by talking to them and understanding the processes that they took to gaining entry to these schools, we have improved our chances of going to the places we want to go to.
All things apart, the conference itself was extremely enjoyable, and personally, we felt like the week went way too fast, and we would do this again, anytime.
A quick thank you to QASMT teacher Mrs Brookes, our UQ sponsors and RCC Director Professor David Abramson.
