PEARC 2021 : Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing

Technical Tracks for ACM PEARC21

Workforce Development, Training, Diversity, and Education: Practice and experience in developing and sustaining advanced research computing as a profession, and developing a highly proficient workforce that realizes the full potential of people in all demographic groups. Examples of relevant topics: training in advanced research computing; curriculum development for STEM, computer science, data science, and computational sciences; learning technologies; case studies with underserved communities and groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields; career and workplace improvement (leadership opportunities, coaching and or mentoring opportunities as part of a leadership development experience, community recognition of the value of research computing and data professionals, creating an inclusive environment); professional development in relevant professional and technical skills, defining research computing, and data career tracks.

Applications and Software: Practice and experience relating to the use of advanced research computing to address problems in the physical and life sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, computer science, engineering, education, manufacturing, government and other fields. Submissions to this track may include, but are not limited to: development of domain-specific software; applications of and application software for GPUs, novel CPUs, FPGAs, or other advanced hardware; optimization, parallelization or other enhancements to existing software; advanced visualization techniques; science gateways and other novel modes of leveraging advanced computing; workflow management systems; cost-effective use of cloud and on-premise HPC resources; advanced user support; scientific results, insights or breakthroughs enabled by research computing; tools, libraries and frameworks that lead to more effective use of computational and data resources; approaches to scientific code design patterns, security and reusability.

Systems and System Software: Practice and experience relating to the system (compute, storage, visualization, containerization, infrastructure and networking hardware) and system software that drives the “hardware” and operations side of cyberinfrastructure and research computing environments. Examples of relevant topics: GPUs, CPUs, containerized solutions, and FPGAs as computational environments; job scheduling; monitoring and usage analysis; fault detection and repair; software stack management; experience with advanced storage systems; hardware and systems for data-centric computing; networking challenges; design and use of visualization environments; design, deployment and maintenance of virtualized environments, funding and operating of advanced research computing facilities (including considerations of cost of locally-sited hardware vs. remote hardware such as cloud facilities), systems procurement, systems administration, cybersecurity, practice and experience in facilitating the acquisition, operation, and use of advanced hardware, software, networks and services to securely and sustainably advance research, scholarship, and creativity; performance comparisons and performance aspects of cloud environments. Submissions covering both established state of practice as well as novel research in operations are welcome.