Festive Colloquium Marks the 30th Anniversary of the HLRZ and NIC

On 1 September 2017, JSC hosted a festive colloquium to mark the 30th anniversary celebration of the Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum (HLRZ) together with Prof. Hoßfeld’s 80th birthday. The HLRZ is the forerunner of today’s John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC). The event provided a welcome opportunity to look back on some remarkable achievements and highlights made possible by simulation on high-performance computers in recent years. After a warm welcome by Prof. Sebastian Schmidt, Prof. Kurt Binder, chairman of the NIC Scientific Council, presented the answers to complex questions arising in the field of soft matter physics – a research area in which supercomputing has provided deep insights. Prof. Wolfgang Nagel from TU Dresden, who was a PhD student of Prof. Hoßfeld and JSC staff member in the 1990s, looked back at the origins of parallel computing. Prof. Thomas Lippert discussed the current state of today’s supercomputing, and the evolving possibilities in neural networks and deep learning. Looking to the future, Prof. Hans De Raedt from the University of Groningen gave an outlook on the coming revolution of quantum computing and the associated challenges and opportunities.

The staff and users of today’s JSC and NIC would like to sincerely thank Prof. Hoßfeld for laying the foundations of these institutions and for all his ground-breaking and pioneering work. We look forward to the coming innovations with excitement and will always fondly remember the first steps into the then new field of HPC.
(Contact: Dr. Alexander Trautmann, coordination-office@fz-juelich.de)

JSC News No. 253, 30 November 2017