[hpc-announce] Call for Participation: 2018 North American Workshop on Silicon Photonics for High Performance Computing

[Sudeep Pasricha]

 Call for Participation: 2018 North American Workshop on Silicon
Photonics for High Performance Computing
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 May 17-18, 2018
 Hilton Fort Collins, CO, USA

 Silicon photonics technology has emerged as a promising solution to
realize high performance computing (HPC) systems. With various target
applications, including HPC, data centers, sensors and bio-sensing,
aerospace, etc., silicon photonics has attracted researchers and
industry interest in different fields to explore the various benefits
and challenges of this technology. As an emerging area, it demands
multidisciplinary collaborations and contributions, from material
engineering to realize low-loss CMOS compatible components to software
 design tools to explore the design space of the resulting complex
devices and systems.

 The North American Workshop on Silicon Photonics for High Performance
Computing (SPHPC) will bring together experts in Silicon Photonics and
in High Performance Computing (HPC architects, interconnect
architects, system modeling experts) to discuss the needs for Silicon
Photonics based HPC interconnects, and the main challenges that must
be addressed to accelerate their development. SPHPC is comprised of
invited talks of the highest caliber from both academia and industry
as well as from different disciplines. This is *the* event for meeting
professionals in the field as well as exchanging and exploring new
ideas. We welcome your participation and hope you can attend this
workshop!

 The workshop is being sponsored by the Walter Scott, Jr. College of
Engineering at Colorado State University and Mentor Graphics
(Siemens).

 In general, we expect to address and discuss the following questions at SPHPC:

 - Are 200G or 400G links and switches absolutely required in the next years?
 - Is the lack of interconnect bandwidth really an obstacle for HPC
system scaling?
 - Are parallel programmers bracing for bandwidth scarce environments?
 - Is low $/Gb/s the only goal or are there other metrics to optimize for?
 - Are HPC system architects well aware of the true potential and
limitations of silicon photonics?
 - Do silicon photonics experts understand well what is required for
HPC interconnects?
 - When will silicon photonics beat (in overall value for money)
copper based back-plane links?
 - Can silicon photonics ever beat copper for short-distance links,
e.g. to memory?
 - Can silicon photonics do better than VCSELs based links?
 - How important is bandwidth density (in Gb/s per silicon area) in
the context of integrated photonics?
 - Are Electronic-Photonic Design Automation (EPDA) tools ready for prime time?
 - How can electrical drivers challenges (SERDES, TIA, coding) better
be taken into account in the link design?
 - How can one expose more the photonic community to electrical
drivers challenges?
 - Is there a realistic solution for low-cost packaging and assembly
of ASICs with integrated photonics?
 - Is it necessary to have the laser co-integrated?
 - Is there really room for optical switching in HPC? How can optics
beat electrical packet switches showing only
   tens of nanosecond of latency?
 - Can ring resonators really replace Mach-Zehnders or EAM for
modulation in practice, even in challenging thermal
   environments?
 - What are the hottest issues and challenges? Which ones must be
addressed first?

 Confirmed Speakers:

 S. J. Ben Yoo, UC Davis, USA
 John Bowers, UCSB/AIM Photonics, USA
 Jean-Francois Carpentier, STMicro., France
 John Ferguson, Mentor Graphics, USA
 Madeleine Glick, Columbia Univ., USA
 John Kim, KAIST, Korea
 Nic McDonald, HPE Labs., USA
 Alan Mickelson, CU Boulder, USA
 Takahiro Nakamura, PETRA, Japan
 Samuel Palermo, Texas A&M, USA
 Clint Schow, UCSB, USA
 Wei Shi, Univ. of Laval, Canada
 Vladimir Stojanovic, UC Berkley, USA
 Pavel Studenkov, Infinera, USA
 Armin Tajalli, Univ. of UTAH, USA
 Michael Tan, HPE Labs., USA
 Jelena Vuckovic, Stanford Univ., USA
 Jeremiah Wilke, Sandia Labs., USA
 Chris Wilson, HPE Labs., USA
 Alex Wright-Gladstein, Ayar Labs., USA
 Chi Xiong, IBM Watson, USA
 David Z. Pan, UT Austin, USA
 Aaron Zilkie, Rockley Photonics, USA

 Registration - More Information:

 http://www.engr.colostate.edu/SPHPC

 Organizing Committee:

 Mahdi Nikdast, Colorado State U, USA
 Sudeep Pasricha, Colorado State U, USA
 Gabriela Nicolescu, Polytech Montreal, CA
 Ashkan Seyedi, HPE Labs., USA
 Sebastien Rumley, Columbia U, USA

 Contact:

 Mahdi Nikdast, Colorado State U, USA
 Mahdi.Nikdast at colostate.edu