HPC is helping to solve the hardest problems in the world. Innovations from our community have far reaching impact in every corner of science, all the way to investment banking, in the discovery of new drugs, to the precise prediction of the next superstorm.

For more than two decades, the SC Conference has been the place to build and share the innovations that are making these life-changing discoveries possible.

Supercomputers are the world's largest and fastest computers that have 10,000 times the processing capability of a home computer and are capable of performing quadrillions of calculations per second. Talks topics are “The Transformative Impact of Parallel Computing for Real-Time Animation”, “Lincoln Wallen, DreamWorks Animation”, “Meeting the Computational Challenges Associated with Human Health”, and “Philip Bourne, National Institutes of Health”.

Over the course of 20 years, DreamWorks Animation has been a leader in producing award winning computer-generated (CG) animated movies such as Shrek, Madagascar and How to Train Your Dragon 2.

In order to scale numerous simulations such as explosions or hundreds of animated characters in a scene, the studio requires a high-performance-computing environment capable of delivering tens of millions of render hours and managing millions of files for one film.

Five years ago, the studio made a decision to re-architect key tools for animation and rendering from the ground up. Through the extensive use of parallel computing the studio has solved the fundamental need to maximize artist productivity and work at the speed of creativity. DreamWorks Animation demonstrates the fully transformative impact ubiquitous parallel computing will have on the complex and varied workflows in Animation.

By the end of this decade healthcare will be a predominantly digital enterprise and for the first time (surprising to say perhaps) patient centric. Such a shift from analog research and diagnosis and a provider centric healthcare system to an open digital system is a major change with opportunities and challenges across all areas of computation. I will describe some of these challenges and opportunities and indicate how the NIH is meeting them and how we need your help

During conference week, 10 additional Invited Talks will feature leaders in the areas of high-performance computing, networking and storage. Invited Talks will typically concern innovative technical contributions and their applications to address the critical challenges of the day.

Additionally, these talks will often concern the development of a major area through a series of important contributions and provide insights within a broader context and from a longer-term perspective. Attendees will hear about pioneering technical achievements, the latest innovations in supercomputing and data analytics, and broad efforts to answer some of the most complex questions of our time.