Keynote lecture

The second day of the school is closing with the keynote speech of Dr. Norbert Eicker, from the Julich Supercomputing Center in Germany. Norbert has been the lead-architect of the JUROPA 25,000 core cluster which featured at the 10th position of the TOP 500 list in 2009 when it was inaugurated. Dr. Eicker spoke about current trends in HPC computing from the hardware designer perspective. He described in detail the commonly used architectures in our days and stressed their strong points and differences. Of particular interest has been the discussion on the scalability of current technologies and system designs indicating the substantial progress that needs to be made to create a machine capable of exascale performance. He then elaborated on ongoing research involving new HPC machines and new architecture models. Norbert's lecture created a lot of interest and several questions from the audience that included, in addition to the school participants, several researchers from other research organizations in Cyprus. The discussion carried on also during the social event that was organized outside the lecture hall used. Over snacks and drinks, Norbert, as well as the rest of the trainers of the school present, were involved in lively discussions with school participants.