​Established in 1988, the SC conference is the largest HPC event of its kind, with big name industries like IBM, Intel, and Oracle sharing the exhibition floor alongside universities, government agencies and small businesses.  In non-pandemic years, attendance typically exceeds 12,000. This year's hybrid event drew nearly 4,000 in person participants.

This is the 13th year that KAUST has attended. The first, in 2008, underscored the university's commitment to be a supercomputing presence in the Arab world.

Throughout the conference, KAUST hosted expert talks at our booth, and the PSE Division (represented by Dean Ravi Samtaney and Fred Schlingemann) was able to engage with prospective students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, and network with professions in the field of HPC.

At the KAUST booth Dean Samtaney presented on Supercomputing Enabled Discoveries in Turbulence.  In his talk Prof. Samtaney highlighted how large-scale computing on supercomputers (specifically the CRAY XC40 Shaheen II at KAUST) has contributed to discoveries in turbulence.  And discussed with the audience the limitations of brute force simulations and how employing turbulence models have enabled us to reach a realistic flow Reynolds number and ultimately led to new insights in complex multi-scale nonlinear turbulent flows.

KAUST's supercomputer Shaheen II is ranked among the 100 supercomputers in the world, and top areas of use include fluid dynamics and clean combustion, materials science, geoscience, bioscience, weather systems and artificial intelligence.

It continues to be an exciting time for KAUST to be involved in HPC in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as the field is propelling research across a broad range of scientific disciplines.  The PSE Division is looking forward to participating again at SC22 in Dallas, Texas.