Software Engineering Daily Turing Award Special: A Conversation with Jack Dongarra
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Mar 18, 2025 
Jack Dongarra, a celebrated computer scientist known for his pivotal work in numerical algorithms and high-performance computing, joins Sean Falconer to discuss his incredible journey. They dive into the differences between regular and supercomputers, the significance of the TOP500 list, and the challenges of data movement in computing. Dongarra also highlights the shift to lower precision in AI computations for efficiency. The conversation points towards the future of supercomputing, integration with AI, and the evolving landscape of benchmarks in assessing performance.
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Career Path Shift
- Jack Dongarra's career path shifted from aspiring high school science teacher to computer scientist after an internship at Argonne National Laboratory.
- He pursued a master's degree while working part-time at Argonne, then earned a PhD while working at Los Alamos National Lab.
HPC Evolution and Software Refactoring
- High-performance computing constantly evolves, requiring software and algorithms to be rewritten every 10 years due to architectural changes.
- This includes shifts from scalar to vector, parallel, multicore, and now hybrid architectures with GPUs.
Supercomputers vs. Cloud
- Supercomputers excel at data-intensive computations with high communication, unlike cloud-based systems with latency and bandwidth overheads.
- On-premises supercomputing is often more cost-effective for large-scale scientific computations than cloud-based solutions.
