Source: School of Mathematics & Computational Science
Written by: School of Mathematics & Computational Science, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science
Translated by: Liang Wenjie
Proofread by: Dr.Ye Weicai
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On June 1, the High Performance Scientific Computing Seminar was held on South Campus of Sun Yat-sen University. It was organized by Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science and Computational Science Innovation Team. The seminar invited Professor Xu Jinchao, a leading scholar of computational science, director of the Center for Computational Mathematics and Applications at the Pennsylvania State University and professor at Peking University, to give a special report on high performance computing. Researchers from School of Mathematics & Computational Science, School of Information Science and Technology, School of Software, Information and Network Center, and research teams of life sciences, marine sciences, physics & chemical engineering, a total of over 30 people, attended the seminar.
Professor Xu Jinchao introduced the latest results in international supercomputing and its applications in scientific engineering computation especially oil exploration. Professor Xu stated that, algorithm design is more important than hardware development because good algorithm is essential for increasing computational efficiency. He also pointed out that, fault-tolerant algorithm is an important research direction of super computing (SC) in the future, for example, how to keep the computer working and the results correct when some processors break down.

Associate Professor Lai Zhigang of School of Marine Sciences reported his research on SC applications in marine sciences. Dr. Zhang Yongdong of Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science introduced the latest progress on H-BLAST, a scalable fast alignment tool for protein sequence on heterogeneous computers. Dr. Wu Junfeng introduced the research and development of programming language for numerical computation of partial differential equations. Dr. Cheng Dongsheng introduced the parallel preconditioned iterative solution of the 3-D Helmholtz equation for the forward modeling in oil-gas exploration.

These reports aroused heated discussions among the researchers on supercomputing applications, especially on application issues and research challenges in marine sciences, life sciences, physical engineering, chemical sciences and other fields.

At the seminar, Guangdong High Performance Computing Society and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science awarded certificates of honor to teachers and students of the SYSU team to commend the excellent result they achieved in the 2013 Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge.