Koric research named Top Supercomputing Achievement

MechSE research associate professor Seid Koric has won Top Supercomputing Achievement in the annual HPCwire Editors’ Choice Awards, at the 2017 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC17), in Denver, Colorado.

“High-performance computing is a multi-billion dollar global industry nowadays with a very large number of research activities and projects worldwide,” Koric said. “We were particularly humbled to be chosen for the Top Supercomputing Achievement this year in a tough competition.”

Koric’s research demonstrated for the first time that multi-frontal sparse factorization algorithm with hybrid parallelization can scale efficiently in today’s large-scale computers. Koric estimates that solving sparse linear equations accounts for 70-80 percent of the time used in many scientific and engineering simulation codes.

Koric utilizes the Blue Waters supercomputer for his work and is highly involved with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“NCSA is honored to be recognized for our contributions that are enabling world-changing research and discoveries,” said Dr. Williams “Bill” Gropp, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. “There's been an explosion in the types of challenges facing the world that can be addressed through data and computing, and NCSA is committed to being a leader in developing solutions to these challenges. Thank you, HPCwire for this recognition.”

Koric and his team, Dr. Anshul Gupta of IBM Watson, Dr. Vladmir Puzyrev of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Scott Wilkin, deputy director of NCSA, demonstrated that solving finite element problems can be done with direct solvers on HPC systems like Blue Waters. Problems that would normally take days to solve can now be solved in less than a minute, which greatly benefits those who needs to produce results both accurately and very quickly. Read more about their work here.

About HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards
The coveted annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards are determined through a nomination and voting process with the global HPCwire community, as well as selections from the HPCwire editors. The awards are an annual feature of the publication and constitute prestigious recognition from the HPC community. These awards are revealed each year to kick off the annual supercomputing conference, which showcases high performance computing, networking, storage, and data analysis.

"From innovative industry leaders to the end consumer, the HPCwire readership reaches and engages every aspect of the high performance computing community," said Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications, publisher of HPCwire. "There is undeniable community support signified in receiving this award. Not only from the entire HPC space, but also the amplitude of industries it serves. We proudly recognize these efforts and achievements and gladly allow the voices of our readers to be heard. Our sincere congratulations to all of the winners.”

More information on these awards can be found at the HPCwire website (http://www.HPCwire.com) or on Twitter through the following hashtag: #HPCwireAwards.