SC (formerly Supercomputing), the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, is the annual conference established in 1988 by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society. In 2019, about 13,950 people participated overall; by 2022 attendance had rebounded to 11,830 both in-person and online. The not-for-profit conference is run by a committee of approximately 600 volunteers who spend roughly three years organizing each conference.
Sponsorship and Governance
SC is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society. From its formation through 2011, ACM sponsorship was managed through ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture (SIGARCH). Sponsors are listed on each proceedings page in the ACM DL; see for example. Beginning in 2012, ACM began the process of transitioning sponsorship from SIGARCH to the recently formed Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC). This transition was completed after SC15, and for SC16 ACM sponsorship was vested exclusively in SIGHPC (IEEE sponsorship remained unchanged). The conference is non-profit.
The conference is governed by a steering committee that includes representatives of the sponsoring societies, the current conference general chair, the general chairs of the preceding two years, the general chairs of the next two conference years, and a number of elected members. All steering committee members are volunteers, with the exception of the two representatives of the sponsoring societies, who are employees of those societies. The committee selects the conference general chair, approves each year's conference budget, and is responsible for setting policy and strategy for the conference.
Conference Components
Although each conference committee introduces slight variations on the program each year, the core components of the conference remain largely unchanged from year to year.
Technical Program
The SC Technical Program is competitive with an acceptance rate around 20% for papers (see History). Traditionally, the program includes invited talks, panels, research papers, tutorials, workshops, posters, and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions.
Awards
Each year, SC hosts the following conference and sponsoring society awards:
ACM Gordon Bell Prize
ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship
ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award
ACM SIGHPC Computational & Data Science Fellowships
ACM SIGHPC Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award
ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing Award
IEEE-CS Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
IEEE-CS Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award
IEEE CS TCHPC Award for Excellence for Early Career Researchers in HPC
Test of Time Award
Exhibits
In addition to the technical program, SC hosts a research exhibition each year that includes universities, state-sponsored computing research organizations (such as the Federal labs in the US), and vendors of HPC-related hardware and software from many countries around the world. There were 353 exhibitors at SC16 in Salt Lake City, UT.
Student Program
SC's program for students has gone through a variety of changes and emphases over the years. Beginning with SC15 the program is called "Students@SC", and is oriented toward undergraduate and graduate students in computing related fields, and computing-oriented students in science and engineering. The program includes professional development programs, opportunities to learn from mentors, and engagement with SC's technical sessions.
SCinet
SCinet is SC's research network. Started in 1991, SCinet features emerging technologies for very high bandwidth, low latency wide area network communications in addition to operational services necessary to provide conference attendees with connectivity to the commodity Internet and to many national research and engineering networks.