Turing Award Laureate Prof. Jack Dongarra enlightens 160+ audiences on high performance computing at PAIR Distinguished Lecture

The 10th PAIR Distinguished Lecture titled “An Overview of High Performance Computing and Future Requirements”, delivered by Prof. Jack DONGARRA, 2021 A. M. Turing Award Laureate and University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of Tennessee, USA, on 6 December 2023 achieved massive success! The hybrid lecture attracted over 160 participants joining in person and online from more than 50 countries and regions in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. It was also broadcast live on multiple social media platforms and viewed by an online audience of over 12,000 in total.

The lecture commenced with a warm welcome address by Prof. CHEN Qingyan, Director of PAIR, and a brief speaker introduction by Prof. CAO Jiannong, Dean of Graduate School, setting the stage for Prof. Dongarra’s inspiring presentation. In his sharing, Prof. Dongarra highlighted how computing pervades all aspects of the society and cloud vendors are pursuing breakthroughs in computer architectures such as processors, accelerators, interconnects and operating systems, with a view to achieving high performance computing. He mentioned how countries worldwide are in a race to build top exascale supercomputers. Prof. Dongarra also pointed out that the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning demands advancements in software and hardware. To conclude the lecture, he emphasised that the hardware for high performance computing is constantly evolving, and a new generation of software libraries and algorithms is needed for effective and reliable dynamic, distributed, and parallel computing. 

A question-and-answer session moderated by Prof. Cao was followed. The audience and Prof. Dongarra had a thought-provoking and fruitful discussion, exchanging views on issues in computing development.

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