Beginning Saturday, November 10, Salt Lake City will be home to one of the fastest computer networks anywhere in the world.

Called SCinet, the network is built each year to support SC, the international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. Over 100 engineers representing industry, academia and government institutions have volunteered their time over the past year to plan and build SCinet using nearly $28 million in donated equipment. The network will serve as the primary backbone supporting all 10,000+ SC conference attendees as they unveil their latest innovations in high performance computing applications.

"SCinet is the primary platform for SC exhibitors to demonstrate the most cutting edge high performance computing applications and collaborations. We support their requirements by building a sophisticated on-site network that links the exhibit floor to the largest and fastest research networks around the world," said Linda Winkler, Senior Network Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory and chair of SCinet for SC12. "As science continues to demand more data intensive and distributed computing – networks play an important role. SCinet allows the networking community to work closely with scientists to show researchers at SC first hand how advanced network technologies can help accelerate science."

As it does each year, SCinet will be provisioning an unprecedented amount of bandwidth into the conference's host convention center. In 2012, SCinet will connect multiple 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) and 100 Gbps circuits in collaboration with leading national and international research networks including ACE, CANARIE, Cisco Research Wave, ESnet, Internet2, JGN, National LambdaRail, KISTI, PacWave, SURFnet, TransPAC, Utah Education Network and the University of Utah which are donating bandwidth to support the conference.

SCinet worked in partnership with the Utah Education Network and the University of Utah to deploy the local infrastructure needed to support this connectivity including acquiring access to miles of fiber optic cable in the Salt Lake metro area and into the Salt Palace. In total, SCinet will deliver nearly 800 Gbps in total capacity to the Salt Palace Convention Center.

Winkler added, "Unlike typical Internet traffic, scientific workflows tend to demand high capacity network links for long duration large data flows. The SCinet infrastructure was architected to meet these demanding requirements."

In addition to the massive external capacity SCinet will bring to the convention center, the network is also providing an experimental testbed called the SCinet Research Sandbox (SRS), which provides a unique opportunity for researchers to showcase disruptive network research using emerging technologies like 100 Gbps circuits as well as OpenFlow technology. Seven projects have been selected as part of the SRS program, all of which will provide a presentation as part of the SC12 Technical Program and will be demonstrating their research in several exhibit booths during the conference.

As always, SCinet will provide attendees with wireless connectivity leveraging the Salt Palace's recently upgraded wireless infrastructure. In addition, SCinet will be providing Eduroam (education roaming) service, which allows users (researchers, teachers, students, staff) from participating institutions to securely access the protected wireless network using their home organization's login credentials.

SCinet is the result of the hard work and significant contributions of many government, research, education and corporate collaborators who have volunteered time, equipment and expertise to ensure SC12's success. Collaborators in SCinet for 2012 include:

Members of the media are invited to visit the on-site network operations center and see the network in action during SC12. Media registration for the conference is open. Members of the press can attend for free, but must fill out the online press form.

About SC12 SC12, sponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE Computer Society, offers a complete technical education program and exhibition to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world class exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learning.

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