Good morning. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, welcome supercomputing friends from all over
the world. It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the International Supercomputing
Conference, ICO9, here in this conquest center in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg. I would
especially welcome Dr. Herlyn Gundelach, Senator of Science, Ministry of Science and
Research. But unfortunately, she told me in the press conference before she has to go.
She has a very sensitive job to do this morning, and so he will be replaced by Dr. Rolf Creve,
the General Research of International Affairs. He will explain a bit more in detail what
is the reason for that. But I also welcome, especially, Professor Dr. Monika Aufwieder-Kurz,
of the University of Hamburg. Okay, they will work at the technique. After eight successful
years in Heidelberg, five years and three years in Dresden, the International Supercomputing
Conference takes place in Hamburg for the first time. Relocating to Hamburg meant a great
challenge for us, the organizers of the 24th International Supercomputing Conference. Let me
explain to you why. This slide shows very nicely the continuous increase of participants. Last year
in Dresden, we ended up with 1,375 all in all. So after last year's successful conference, it
made perfect sense to aim at 1,500 participants this year. We published this estimation, this
forecast after last year's conference in Dresden, but then the worldwide finance and economic crisis
struck. Now we have had the problem of what to do. Before the online registration starts in March
this year, we had a meeting with a couple of our sponsors and discussed the new situation. They
want us to be not so optimistic. And one sponsor said you have at least 10% less participants. The
next one said 20% less participants. And the sponsors, I don't mention the name of course,
said you should be glad if you got 1,000. Okay, then we had an internal meeting, but we decided
finally to go the optimistic way and stay with 1,500 participants. 1,500 participants, that is a lot
in the situation. And of course, at this time, beginning of March, where the Hanover fair, the
seppit, the biggest IT show in the world takes place, there was some rumor that they are facing
problems. And they have been very glad they ended up with just 20% less compared to the year before.
Okay, what makes us a bit more optimistic to say with the 1,500? That has to do with the following.
We had done already two major decisions independent of the economic and financial crisis. We lowered
the attendance fees and why we could do that. We could do that since we have introduced the first
time here in Hamburg, a refined sponsor structure with platinum, gold, silver and bronze. That was
the first thing. And then we have been very optimistic that compared to Dresden, we will have
much more exhibitors from all around the world. And that gave us the opportunity to lower the
attendance fees. The next point, which also has been agreed already before the crisis started,
was that we introduced an additional conference day rather than have a pre-conference day in
the conferences before. So now the conference is four days from Tuesday to Friday. And we have
given the participants the opportunity to book each day separately. There was no need long as in
the years before to book the whole conference. You can book one day, two days, three days and so on.
Okay. Now, last night, the normal registration closed. And so we have been very interesting
what was the figure we have reached so far at this time. So at midnight, we have had 1527
participants' registration. That is an all-time record. And it is, for me, unbelievable. Unbelievable.
And I call it the ISC miracle of Hamburg. I'm definitely sure that we will end up after the
on-site registration will close on Friday with significantly more than 1,600 attendees since we
know that normally about 150 on-site registration we may expect. Okay. What will we offer this year
to those more than 1,500 attendees at the moment? We stay with our proven, say, three pillar concepts
with the ISC program, the ISC exhibition, and the ISC social events. Let's start with the ISC
program. You can't read that very nicely, but if you look in your conference guide, you have
head in your back, you can look at this very carefully. We are in the opening session with
the welcome addresses, with the awardings, with a presentation of the 33rd top 500 list and with a
keynote presentation. And this afternoon, you have a choice between the scientific afternoon,
the scientific afternoon. These are three scientific sessions based on the call for
papers procedure. And you have the choice between two in-depth sessions about HPC and climate
modelling, very well suited here for Hamburg and HPC and aeronautics. This is the offering
for today. Tomorrow morning, we will start with the session cloud computing in HPC, you know.
This is a password cloud computing, and we think that it is the right time now to discuss cloud
computing together with HPC. And this is a session very well prepared and with high
curate speakers, and I'm very confident that you all will benefit from this session.
If we look at our famous hot seed sessions, we have made a change. We will have, of course,
the hot seed session, which makes a difference between ISC and all other HPC conferences in the
world. Now, rather than packing all 18 presentations in one afternoon, as in the past, we now do it
in two afternoons, that is, on Wednesday and on Thursday afternoon, we will have nine
short presentations by the vendors, 10 minute presentations after that. They are grilled by
specially selected inquisitors with two probing questions, everybody of these speakers. And this
will again be a very interesting approach, I hope, and we will see what you think in the
questionnaire about this new approach. Okay.
Let me introduce especially the four keynote speakers to you. Our keynote and the ISC
conference keynote will be legendary Andy von Bechdelsheim. He is here listed under two
umbrellas. One umbrella is Sun Microsystems, and the second umbrella is Arista Networks.
There was some confusion. We started with Sun Microsystems, and then we ended up with Arista
Networks, but by the end we had the compromise to have him talk under two umbrellas. He will
give a talk on the evolution of interconnects for high performance computing, and I will come back
to this talk by the end of this session again, of course. Then we have our friend Thomas Stirling,
who is doing an excellent, and I have to add an entertaining job with translating HPC internals,
HPC expertise to you, the customers, the guys coming from industry research labs, and so on.
Not so familiar, maybe, with HPC, but he's doing this job now for six years or so in an excellent
way. And on Thursday night we have an interesting talk, and maybe this is a talk surprising you,
the title at least of this talk, Lean Brain Management, More Success and Efficiency by
Saving Intelligence. That is surprising, of course. Professor Duke is well known
for many of the readers of the informatics spectrum in Germany, and yeah, he has convinced
me that is not just an approach they are using at IBM. Okay. And last but not least, we have
Professor Edgar Kerner, President of Honda Research Institute Europe, and he will visit with us the
world of robotics, and he is talking about the brain-like vision. And now let's come to the
exhibition. We will have this year's 120 exhibitors registered at ISC09 compared to 85
last year in Dresden. This is approximately 35% more. We are again hosting Europe's number one
HPC exposition, and also the floor space, the exhibition space, is 4,500 meters to the square,
and we can grow in the next two years where we have already decided to stay here in Hamburg.
In the floor plan, you can't read that, but again, this is a special leaflet in your
conference guide. Look where your vendor, your HPC manufacturer, has his booth, and where you
probably may visit him. And now we are coming to the very important social events.
Tonight's ISC organization will throw a welcome party inside the exhibition in the exhibition
hall. That means at 6 p.m. the exhibition is starting, and till 10 p.m. we will have a welcome
party where you have German beer, of course, wine, food, music, and so on. And tomorrow night
we will have a very special event called International Superconference Networking Event.
The sponsors behind this event are Intel, HP, Microsoft, and many others. And this
event will take place in the Altehagenbechschetresuahalle. I can't translate. It certainly will
lose by translation. And so if you are interested in this event and you even like to be picked up
at your hotel and brought back, please go in the conference guide. There is a link where you can
and should register for this event. I, myself, will do that definitely after this morning.
On Thursday night we have a reception in the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, Bersenzahl,
and we are also very interested in this interesting event. The four keynote speakers have already
agreed and are happy to be invited and will go there definitely.
Then we will have, starting at 8 p.m. on Thursday night, various vendor parties you have
to go to the booth and ask for an invitation. I cannot help you there.
So now it's time to say thank you for making ISC09 possible.
First of all, I'd like to thank the more than 1527 attendees. Now I'm not convinced that we
will stay with the 1527. At least one more will register and I will take care of this.
So 1527 attendees. You have trusted us that we again will do an excellent job
doing for you all the preparations from the organization side and also providing you with
an, I hope so, excellent program. We will have 220 speakers, chairpersons and inquisitors.
And this is an unbelievable high number, so to say. And then I would like to say
my thanks to some institutions here in Hamburg, the Ministry of Science and Research,
Free and Handiatic City of Hamburg. And especially to the University of Hamburg,
they helped us a lot in different ways and we are so glad that we have the University of Hamburg
here supporting us this year and hope so also in the next two years. And I also have to
thank the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the German Climate Computing Center
here in Hamburg. And I have to thank the ISC09 committees. There has been a program committee
with members, a scientific program committee, a poster committee, a local committee and even the
the, yes, we have the award committee especially and I thank all the members of these committees
for their work done for us and without this work ISC09 would not be so successful as we hope it will
be. And then I have to thank the company, Brocade Communication System for sponsoring
the network. I have to thank Samsung Semiconductor Europe for sponsoring of notebooks and printers
and I have Wolf van Nagel listen the University of Dresden for their supply of switches. I don't
know whether you have a better supply than the Hamburg guys but you have given us support. Thank
you very much indeed. And now I'm coming to my thanks mentioning people. Mentioning people is
always a difficult job since most times you miss one and but I'm sure that now I have the right
persons here. First of all I'd like to thank Professor Thomas Ludwig now director of DKR set.
He was the head of the ISC09 scientific program committee. Around 50 papers came in. They had to
be reviewed and Thomas did a great job especially he managed to publish the 24 accepted papers
in a Springer journal already available here at the conference. You can already buy this journal.
Then I have to say my thanks to Professor Michael Resch, director of HLRS in Stuttgart. He was the
head of the ISC09 award committee. He also as all the years before did a great job. He is
not a lazy man I can say and he did everything for us. Then I have to thank Joachim Birkamp.
He was the head of the research poster committee. He also did with his colleagues a great job.
My special thanks to Dr Werner Hansmann from the University of Hamburg. He did a great job in
supporting Thomas Ludwig in reviewing the papers. The same holds for Pierre Steltinger
University of Hamburg. He was a member of the local organizing committee.
Now I hope I did not forget anybody. Last but not least I like to thank one man
from the University of Hamburg who was the one who did from the very beginning
till the start and hopefully also during the conference a great job for us. It is
that was too early. Just a moment before coming to the sky I have to thank also Reinhard Boudic
and Wolfgang Hiller. They both have organized and will moderate the important in-depth session
climate modeling and HPC. I have to thank Siegfried Knecht from EADS. He has had the idea and has
organized the complete in-depth session supercomputing challenges for research in aeronautics.
You will not read his name in one of the committees. You will not see this guy
listed in the session but he is the one and he has managed to invite
the senator for economics in his session to give a welcome address. This is not obvious and
he will be this afternoon in this session of course.
Then I have to thank Professor Kranzelmüller and Martin Walker for preparing very well
the session cloud computing I have mentioned before and we will have this cloud computing
tomorrow morning over four hours. We are not running this in parallel. This is a single track
session the cloud computing session since we are sure that you all are interested in
this special session and now I come to the one I like to thank especially and it is my friend
Professor Carl Kaiser from the University of Hamburg. Carl Kaiser when we have had a problem
my people came to me and said oh please ask KK. KK was his abbreviation and then I knew I had to
give him a phone call and he was managing everything and he did a really great job and I
promise you Carl one beer is not enough to drink with you it must be some more.
And now I come to the support of our sponsors. First of all the platinum sponsors
these six companies they especially also sponsored the ISC awards Intel and Sun many thanks for
sponsoring the ISC awards. Here we have the silver sponsors the gold sponsors before
was blue art pool HP IBM melanox and SGI. Here are the silver sponsors and
now we are coming to the welcome address of Dr. Herr Lind Gundelag but not given by
Herr but by her replacement Dr. Rolf Creve please. That ends my presentation so far.