On March 7-10, the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) hosted the fourth annual Programming Environment and Training (PET) Technical Review for the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office (HPCMPO). The event was held at the Blackwell Hotel and The Ohio State University (OSU) Conference Center.
University, industry, and government researchers who support HPCMP throughout the nation gathered for the week's activities. University and industry leads in fourteen different computational and cross-cutting technical areas presented their technical accomplishments for the past year.
The program was webcast to government installations across the nation.
One presenter made his presentation remotely from the University of Maryland using Ohio's Third Frontier Network connection.
"Everyone was really impressed with the program and facility and commented that this was the best Technical Review we've ever had," said Dr. Dick Pritchard, OSC's Deputy Project Director for the PET contract.
"We got incredible support from the Blackwell staff, OSU Information Technology, and OSC support staff."
OSC is a leadership partner on the PET contract with Mississippi State University (MSU). MSU is the prime contractor for a coalition of ten universities and four companies. The $108 million contract was competitively awarded in 2001. The PET Technical Review also included the High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi) team, which won the remainder of the PET contract, worth about $36 million over the eight-year period.
PET is responsible for gathering and deploying the best ideas, algorithms, and software tools emerging from the national HPC infrastructure into the DoD user community as part of DoD's HPCMP. The PET contract provides high-level support to users of the DoD HPC centers.
Other members of the MSU-led coalition include OSU, the University of Texas-Austin, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, University of Alabama-Birmingham, University of Hawaii, Jackson State University, Central State University, Florida International University, Computer Sciences Corporation, and SAIC. Dr. Joe F. Thompson, William L. Giles Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at MSU, directs the MSU PET contract. The HPTi team includes Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas-El Paso, University of Maryland, and East Carolina University.
