D-INFK news channel

The RACKlette team, consisting of six Computer Science Bachelor students, won the Computer Cluster Competition (SCC) at the International Supercomputing Conference in Denver, Colorado. Since the first edition of the SCC back in 2007, this is the first time that a European team has won the competition. Congratulations!

From Sept. 1, 2023, Professor Torsten Hoefler will be affiliated with the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). CSCS, with its upcoming new “Alps” high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, and the ETH professor want to jointly test and advance methods and applications for machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Founded by Professor Torsten Hoefler and his students, and supported by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, Team RACKlette offers computer science students the chance to learn about high-performance computing and get first-hand experience of how to set up and optimise such systems to run scientific or industrial applications.

In theory, quantum computers vastly outperform classical computers in terms of computing speed. For them to do so in practice, it is necessary to design more and novel high-​speed algorithms, says ETH supercomputing specialist Torsten Hoefler. 

Professor Torsten Hoefler, Head of the Institute for High Performance Computing Systems, is the inaugural recipient of the Jack Dongarra Early Career Award. Big congratulations!

The term "high-​performance computer" already implies a high energy demand. Energy efficiency is therefore a central consideration in the procurement and use of supercomputers at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS).

Dr. Maciej Besta, who is a member of the Scalable Parallel Computing Lab at the Department of Computer Science, has won the 2022 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award. Congratulations!

When working with neural networks, their training is the single most resource-​demanding and costly process. Two computer scientists from Torsten Hoefler's team have now developed a software that considerably speeds up training. This will be especially relevant for scientific applications of future users of “Alps” at CSCS.

Carl August Zehnder's work not only shaped the Department of Computer Science, but also the Swiss state and society. In this continuing conversation, the founder of D-INFK explains the benefits of associations, how not to lose touch in a fast-moving field and why openness is of great importance for computer scientists.

Professor emeritus Carl August Zehnder is one of the founders of the Department of Computer Science. In this video, he talks about how his research field developed out of practical necessity, the competitive pressure against other departments, and the importance of infrastructure at ETH Zurich.

Professor emeritus Walter Gander was a strong advocate for computer science since the 80s. He was committed to independent computer science teaching in Swiss schools, supported women in CS and participated in development projects abroad. In the second part of this interview, Walter Gander tells us about his work as head of department, his long-term book projects and how copy & paste was done in the 80s.

Prof. em. Walter Gander helped Switzerland acquire a high-performance computer, promoted the implementation of e-mail at ETH Zurich, and wrote the first book using LaTeX. In this interview with Lukas Fässler, high above the rooftops of Zurich, he talks about the beginnings of the Department of Computer Science and about a career that stretched from St. Gallen to Hong Kong.

The SRF programme Mensch, Technik, Wissenschaft from September 9, 1988, reported on the supercomputer Cray X-MP/28, which can still be found at ETH Zurich today – albeit in a somewhat different function.

A group of scientists is creating a digital twin of our planet to simulate the Earth system in future. Professor Torsten Hoefler from the Institute for High Performance Computing Systems is one of the researchers showing how this can be achieved.

Professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung and Professor Torsten Hoefler have been honoured with an ERC Consolidator Grant for the outstanding work in their respective research field.

The International Open Benchmark Council committee has recognized Professor Torsten Hoefler with the BenchCouncil Rising Star Award for his valuable work in the field of benchmark testing, metrics and optimization.

Doctoral student Johannes de Fine Licht and Bachelor student Manuel Burger from the Scalable Parallel Computer Laboratory have won in two categories at the Xilinx Open Hardware Design Contest.

ETH Zurich is one of four selected universities around the world to establish adaptive compute research clusters with teams from Xilinx, a company that develops highly flexible and adaptive processing platforms to enable rapid innovation across a variety of technologies.

Congratulations to Prof. Onur Mutlu for receiving the prestigious award given for innovative and impactful contributions to computer memory systems.

Two research groups from ETH Zurich have developed a method that can simulate nanoelectronics devices and their properties realistically, quickly, and efficiently. This offers a ray of hope for the industry and data centre operators alike, both of which are struggling with the (over)heating that comes with increasingly small and powerful transistors - and with the high resulting electricity costs for cooling.

Prof. Marc Snir says that systems with exascale performance are likely to be deployed in 2020-​2023. He is involved in several efforts to define the software research agenda for exascale and start executing on it. In his opinion, exascale may be the end of the road, at least for a system using silicon technology. Prof. Hoefler is asking Prof. Snir about his views on high-​performance computing in the next decade. 

According to the European Research Council, its ERC grants “aim to support up-​and-coming research leaders who are about to establish a proper research team and to start conducting independent research in Europe”. Professor Torsten Hoefler has been awarded one of these prestigious grants. His group addresses a fundamental and increasingly important challenge in computer science: how to efficiently program heterogeneous supercomputers with millions of processors of different architectures.

Computer scientist Torsten Hoefler is the winner of this year’s Latsis Prize awarded by ETH Zurich. His Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory is one of the few laboratories to combine theory and application in the field of high-​performance computing. Although mentors warned him against uniting these two aspects, it is precisely by doing so that he has now achieved his success.