The SC22 Conference is underway in Dallas, bringing together members of the international high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis community to share the latest research, technologies, and demonstrations.

Exhibitors and visitors at the SC Conference this year will enjoy access to 5.01 terabits per second of bandwidth across 1 million square feet in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas thanks to SCinet, the dedicated high-capacity network for the conference.

SCinet is a collaborative effort by over 175 volunteer experts from 80 volunteer organizations that span industry, academia, and government. This spirit of collaboration is a major driver for the success and innovation that SCinet delivers on a yearly basis.

Seventeen organizations in particular were instrumental in supporting large-scale international science at the SC Conference this year, and they are being recognized with the SCinet Spirit of Innovation Award:

“The winners of the 2022 SCinet Spirit of Innovation Award have embraced the spirit of collaboration and cooperation that showcases the best there is to offer in demonstrating, implementing, and operating leading-edge solutions to challenging problems,” said Matt Zekauskas, SCinet Chair. “This collaboration is truly special to SCinet, and we are all encouraged by and appreciative of their efforts to showcase partnership and innovation.”

The research innovations are being demonstrated at the NICT booth at SC22 this year, and feature several experiments that will leverage International connectivity and technology support being provided by the collocating partners. These demonstrations will transmit data and video streams of various qualities across a multi-continental path, use cloud and edge computing approaches to perform at scale video processing and measuring and monitoring of the network infrastructure, and use this intelligence to dynamically control the network path.

SCinet contributors donate millions of dollars in equipment, software, and services that are needed to build and support the network each year for the SC Conference. At this year’s conference in Dallas, it’s estimated that contributions from 29 organizations will total $70 million.

AARNet, APONET, ARENA-PAC, CENIC, Ciena, Cisco, HARNET, Internet2, KISTI, NICT, NII, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, REANNZ, SingAREN, TransPAC, University of Hawaii, and Verizon were recognized at a private ceremony on Monday, November 14.

The Beatles performing September 1964 (left) and SCinet staging October 2022 (right), both at what is now the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Arena in Dallas, Texas.

Photos: Hans C. Addleman, AP photo

Ground-breaking Technology and Revolutionary Musicians Distinguish the Same Dallas Venue

The Beatles and High Performance Networking may seem like entirely unrelated topics. But they’re connected this fall at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

In 1964 the Beatles broke musical ground when they performed here, and now 58 years later another ground-breaking performance is underway.

Zekauskus, who is SCinet Chair this year, is directing an international team of more than 175 volunteer engineers, technicians and students. It’s all in preparation for SC22, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis.
The SCinet team at SC includes 16 committees that range from plain English names like architecture, communications, contributor relations, experimental networks, help desk, logistics, power, network security and volunteer services to more jargon-heavy terms like dev-ops, edge, fiber, NRE and WAN transport.

It takes that team more than a year to plan, a month to build, a week to operate and a single day to dismantle the network. All of it involves extensive collaboration, or as Lennon and McCartney called it, HELP!

Starting October 19, equipment racks were initially staged in the convention center’s arena and then moved to its exhibit hall to deliver connectivity across half a million square feet. Those racks weighed about four tons.

When SC22 starts on November 13, thousands of attendees are expected to descend on Dallas from all over the world, but they won’t be isolated from global connections. SCinet will connect attendees, exhibitors, and network performance experiments to other high performance sites in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

The speed of that global network is expected to break the 3.02 Terabits per seconds (Tbps) delivered for last year’s conference in St. Louis, by delivering 5.01 Tbps of bandwidth to Dallas. That’s fast enough to download the movies “HELP!” and “A Hard Day’s Night” along with the entire movie collection in iTunes in about seven minutes.

About SC22

SC22 is the premier international conference showcasing the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education, and commerce. The annual event, created and sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), attracts thousands of HPC professionals and educators from around the globe to participate in its complete technical education program, workshops, tutorials, a world-class exhibit area, demonstrations, and the world’s fastest temporary computer network.

Why do scientists, researchers and engineers – across the globe – flock to SC every year?

The answers are many, but most center on their quest for discovery, to learn about the latest and most innovative high-performance computing and next-generation networking technologies that are redefining the way we live and work.

And at SC22, that thirst for advanced technological solutions also applies to the conference’s customized wireless network, which will enable thousands of attendees and exhibitors to connect and communicate seamlessly with colleagues inside and outside the spacious Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

Thanks to the contribution of millions of dollars in equipment and manpower by PIER Group, a 2022 SCinet Diamond contributor, the conference’s SCinet high-capacity network will – for the first time – feature Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz) technology. But don’t worry, it’s backwards compatible so your current electronics will connect.

According to PIER Group’s Director of Networking Shannon Champion, who is leading a 10-person team from the company that will install and oversee the network, Wi-Fi 6E is “unexplored territory” for most Wi-Fi network users in research, education or enterprises.

“This is new technology that very few have deployed at scale,” Shannon explains. “Wi-Fi 6E will give SC22 attendees a wired-like experience, just like being connected to a switch, anywhere in the conference area that is covered by wireless.”

Recently, PIER Group completed the largest deployment of Wi-Fi 6E technology to date for the entire University of Michigan campus. Serving more than 63,000 students with 16,000 access points across 225 buildings, the new network can accommodate up to 70,000 concurrent Wi-Fi connections at download speeds up to 750 megabits per second.

Of course, SCinet is no stranger to innovation. Since its birth in 1991, for the fourth SC event held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, SCinet is annually the most powerful and advanced network in the world for the duration of the conference. To learn about SCinet’s many networking milestones, visit the SCinet History page.

Every year, network experts who either volunteer or participate through sponsorships join together to design, build and administer the SCinet wireless and wired infrastructure. Leading the approximately 200-person team this year is SCinet Chair Matthew J. Zekauskas, senior researcher at Internet2.

While PIER Group has been a longtime SC exhibitor and SCinet participant, the company was asked to provide additional support last year. This was due to the need for additional wired and wireless capacity to accommodate the thousands of attendees who attended virtually due to the pandemic, and thus could only view presentations and events via streaming.

“The feedback we received was that a lot of the exhibitors didn’t need to plug into (wired network) switches because the wireless service was so good,” notes Shannon. “And we’re expanding beyond that this year.”

Beyond its ability to enable exhibitors and attendees to maintain connectivity, SCinet serves as the platform for demonstrating advanced computing resources by supporting a wide variety of bandwidth-driven supercomputing and cloud computing applications through workshops, demos and collaborations.

As always, the SCinet hub for SC this year will be in its show floor-based networking operating center (NOC), which also serves as a display area for the latest commercial equipment used to run this high-performance wired and wireless network.

Learn more about SCinet and discover how to become a SCinet volunteer or contributor. SCinet also includes opportunities for Student Volunteers and Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) participants.