Michael delivered a keynote address earlier this week at the SC08 Conference, a confluence of all the smartest minds in the world of supercomputing. Dell invited about a dozen students from AISD’s Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA) to join the conference and spend some time talking with Michael, industry scientists, researchers and engineers attending the conference, and tour the conference exhibit hall with the 10,000 other SC08 attendees.
The mission of LASA is to "offer a rigorous, innovative, and nationally recognized interdisciplinary curriculum to educate sociall
y responsible leaders, problem-solvers and thinkers." The students certainly experienced some of that this week by taking part in SC08’s Broader Engagement (BE) Program, in which they had the opportunity to interface at length with leading scientists including a nuclear physicist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Following Michael’s talk, in which he discussed ‘everyday supercomputing and the fourth wave of supercomputing,’ I had the opportunity to get some thoughts from Gray Salada who is the chief information officer for the Austin Independent School District and a Dell customer. He echoed much of what Michael discussed on energy savings and increased density as it relates to the fourth wave of supercomputing, but also relates to general use of desktop and laptop computing. (Note: you can now watch a replay of Michael’s keynote here and can also take a look at his presentation and other SC08 information here.)