About SIGHPC

SIGHPC is the first international group within a major professional society that is devoted exclusively to the needs of students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners in high performance computing. SIGHPC's mission is to help spread the use of HPC, help raise the standards of the profession, and help ensure a rich and rewarding career for people involved in the field.

The HPC community includes an incredibly wide range of individuals and organizations engaged in studying, developing, teaching, and supporting high performance computers, storage, networking, and software. It also encompasses those who are working to apply HPC across a broad spectrum of scientific, engineering, and business domains.

If you're interested in more information on how ACM SIGHPC is governed, refer to our bylaws.

Your Profession, Your Organization

Part of the excitement of a career in HPC is its multi-disciplinary nature: HPC brings together computational techniques, algorithms, system software, computer architecture, parallel programming, and system administration. SIGHPC focuses on high performance computing in the broadest sense, spanning the full range of high-performance technologies, systems, and applications.

Finding your way among the choices and career paths can be challenging. SIGHPC helps by:

  • disseminating research and experiences by those using computing resources to tackle our society's toughest problems;

  • promoting the mentoring and education of the next generation of HPC professionals; and

  • serving as a source of information about the field to the larger computing and scientific communities.

Your Personal Resource for HPC

Over time, www.SIGHPC.org will serve as a home base for a number of activities that currently do not exist or are run on an ad-hoc basis, including the following:

  • developing a comprehensive online "community calendar" publicizing information about conferences, meetings, proposal solicitations, working groups, etc. of interest to people in HPC

  • publishing a regular online newsletter promoting activities and opportunities of interest to SIGHPC members

  • promoting regional interactions among people in HPC, especially in countries outside the US

  • developing online repositories for HPC training materials, archives of workshop materials, dissertation clearinghouses, etc.

  • sponsoring/co-sponsoring workshops and meetings

  • disseminating information about groups developing standards or curricula related to HPC

  • nominating HPC people for awards and honors (including ACM Fellow)

  • sponsoring fellowships for students in HPC-related studies

  • providing travel support for students or underrepresented groups to attend HPC conferences/workshops

SIGHPC and Diversity

SIGHPC believes that HPC can only reach its full potential through the efforts of people from all backgrounds, organizations, and disciplines. The organizers of all SIGHPC-related activities are asked to:

  • structure their committees to include diverse backgrounds and opinions

  • establish rigorously fair review/selection processes to ensure there is no explicit or implicit bias against newcomers

  • choose speaker lineups that include diverse representation

  • track their progress in improving diversity by gathering and disseminating statistics on the gender/geographical/organizational makeup of committees, reviewers, authors, and speakers