News and Announcements
Tickle College of Engineering Announces Anzt as New ICL Director
Tickle College of Engineering announced Hartwig Anzt as the new director of Innovative Computing Lab. Dr. Anzt’s position will be the MathWorks Associate Professor in Scientific Computing and the Innovative Computing Lab Director. The professorship is the result of a $1M donation from Mathworks, Inc. to create the MathWorks Endowed Professorship in Scientific Computing, based in EECS.
Dr. Anzt previously served as a Helmholtz-Young-Investigator Group leader at the Steinbuch Centre for Computing at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He obtained his PhD in Mathematics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and afterwards joined Jack Dongarra’s Innovative Computing Lab at the University of Tennessee in 2013. Since 2015 he has also held a Senior Research Scientist position at the University of Tennessee.
He is author of the MAGMA-sparse open source software package managing lead and developer of the Ginkgo numerical linear algebra library, and part of the US Exascale computing project delivering production-ready numerical linear algebra libraries.
He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Society, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing in the Regional Group of Middle Tennessee.
ICL33 The Jack Dongarra Experience
ICL33, focused on Jack Dongarra’s retirement, was a celebration of all the small kindnesses, contributions, and collaborations along the path of his career. Current and former members traveled from nearby and abroad to spend an evening sharing stories, memories, and reminiscences of times at ICL. ASG and TSG teams worked jointly to provide a modest production for Jack that included an auspicious speech and toast from incoming MathWorks Professor and ICL director Hartwig Anzt, a tribute video with contributions from current and former ICLers from across the globe, an online chat between Jack and Terry Moore, and a presentation of a few, special gifts to Jack and Sue Dongarra.
The evening saw plenty of laughs, especially during the showing of an exclusive music video by ICL’s “Fantastic Four”, toasts and shared stories of Jack’s inspiration and encouragement, and of course a few tears at heartfelt moments. While Jack’s major accomplishments were mentioned and honored, it was the small stories, those of personal moments, that painted the true picture of his influence and impact. Of course, family featured prominently as well. Sue Dongarra was recognized for her contributions to ICL, and many photos were taken with the extended Dongarra family. The evening ended with photo sessions with all in attendance as well as individuals and groups represented at the event. Certainly, some of those photos will end up in future ICL tributes.
“Fantastic Four” Video
Tribute Videos
https://www.tribute.co/jack-dongarra/
ICL33 Slideshow
Dongarra Featured in Oak Ridger Article
ICL’s Jack Dongarra was the focus of a recent article in The Oak Ridger. The article summarizes Jack’s recent talk given to Friends of ORNL (FORNL).
Dongarra emphasized that supercomputer hardware is constantly changing, so programmers must keep developing algorithms and designing software to match hardware capabilities. He warned that although the U.S. leads the world in super-computing, China is not far behind. He added that a major revolution in high-performance computing will be the upcoming increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a computer program or machine to learn and think like humans by finding patterns in a vast database.
Conference Reports
PEARC 22
PEARC 22 was held this year in Boston from July 10th-14th. This year’s theme, Revolutionary: Computing, Connections, You, acknowledged rapid shifts that have become a constant in the field of advanced computing; the PEARC community’s role in creating new, state-of-the-art methods; and the imperative, as individuals, to achieve an ethical and connected computing future.
Jack Dongarra surveyed the state of the art as reflected in the new generation of exascale computers in his talk, “High-Performance Computing: Where We Are Today and a Look into the Future.” He argued that moving forward will require both new hardware and hardware tailored to the job of minimizing the communications bottlenecks that force these machines to operate at well below their theoretical capacity.
HPCWire featured Jack’s talk in this recent article.
Jack Dongarra at #PEARC22 — mixed precision and design-for-purpose accelerators are now driving performance in #HPC — expect Zettaflops (10^21) performance by 2030. Quantum and light-based processors are on the horizon. pic.twitter.com/Gr7JajbQaO
— Andy Anderson 🕸 (@WebObservatory) July 13, 2022
