It all started with the need to better align algorithms and the architecture of high-performance computers for solving highly complex problems in science. The goal of these interdisciplinary collaborations was to design both the software and the computer architectures to be more efficient. To this end, researchers from varying disciplines as well as mathematicians, software engineers and hardware manufacturers were united in projects under the initiative Platform for High-Performance and High-Productivity Computing (HP2C). The first HP2C projects started in December 2009 and were replaced by the Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC) initiative in 2013. Finally, the first PASC Conference was held at ETH Zurich in summer 2014, bringing these many stakeholders together in one place. Olaf Schenk, Professor of Computing at Università della Svizzera italiana and Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), has been involved in the PASC initiative from the beginning. He is now a member of the PASC Conference steering committee. We sat down with him to look back at the history of the PASC conferences. Read the interview >
PASC24 Conference: June 3 to June 5, 2024