Supercomputing Conference Day 0

This was Teen Daughter The Younger's last day with Southern Man. After church we met with Southern Parents and Teen Daughter the Elder for lunch, and then went to the airport with plenty of time to spare so naturally we breezed through ticketing and security and spent an hour at the gate playing word games and chatting. Southern Man saw her board, texted her mother, and then headed to work to pack up the LittleFe supercomputer for the conference at Enormous State University about half an hour south of Southern City.

Our host is HN, lord and master of Enormous State University's brand-new Top-500 supercomputer and guru of all topics related to high-performance computing. His presentations are energetic, informative, and hilarious. Tonight's lecture was over familiar material but Southern Man pays close attention to the way he said it so he can steal bits and pieces for his own lectures.

"Back in the olden days, and by that I mean February..."

A good turnout.

This young man, now a colleague at a state school a bit to the north, was Southern Man's student during his very first year of teaching twenty-five years ago. Somehow, he survived.

Dr. S has been a long-time participant at these conferences.

The evening ended with a tour of the new supercomputer, which was completed a few months ago and sits in about the middle of the current Top-500 list.

The conference will run a week and will focus not so much on learning how to use high-performance computing systems, but how to teach others how to use high-performance computing systems. It should be fun and informative and Southern Man is going to pretend that he's really away at a conference instead of a mere hour or so from La Casa.