SuperComputing 99 Conference (Portland, Oregon)

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Members of the BioCoRE collaboratory team went to the SuperComputing 99 conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference was held in November of 1999, and the team demonstrated the job submission and monitoring tool and the use of the haptic device for Interactive Molecular Dynamics.

Specifically, we ran a web browser on the computer in Portland and used our job submission and monitoring applet to start a NAMD molecular dynamics simulation running on our computers back in Illinois (at selected times we also ran the simulation on NCSA's Origin 2000 cluster). Once we had the simulation running, we used VMD to connect to the simulation and interactively "steer" it. To "steer" the simulation we used a haptic device which gave us six degrees of freedom, as well as force-feedback.

We were representing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the National Coordination Office (NCO) booth (booth R102, (125K)) as part of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. The NCO had also invited representatives from NOAA, NIST, NASA, and NSF who were in the booth.

Justin Gullingsrud and myself (Kirby Vandivort) arrived in Portland late on Saturday, November 13, 1999. On Sunday Justin attended tutorials and on Monday morning we set up our equipment in the exhibit hall at the convention center. I took a number of pictures which chronicled the events of the week, and here they are:

  • Nov 15 09:44am - NCO people stuffing our brochures for us. Justin and myself were busy setting up our equipment and some of the NCO workers graciously offered to stuff some of our brochures for us. (small ( 47K), large (175K))

  • Nov 15 09:44am - Justin working on our equipment. At this time we only had one network connection running to our desk. The man laying on the floor in the background is running another cable under the carpet to our desk. (small ( 55K), large (167K))

  • Nov 15 09:45am - Another picture of brochure stuffing and Justin. You can see the NCSA/Alliance booth which was right next to our booth. We ended up having pretty good traffic in our booth. (small ( 49K), large (164K))

  • Nov 15 09:45am - This is a picture of the entire NCO booth. (small ( 38K), large (172K))

  • Nov 15 5:52pm - This shows our booth all set up and ready to go. We were supposed to get all of the equipment set up Monday morning and then vacate the exhibit hall in the afternoon but because of network difficulties (sc99 router problems) we ended working through the afternoon. (small ( 59K), large (171K))

  • Nov 15 6:19pm - Kirby (on the left) and Justin (on the right) wearing the official NCO booth denim shirts all ready to demo! (small ( 62K), large (178K))

    There was an opening "gala" that was held on Monday night from 7-9pm where the exhibit hall was open and conference attendees could get a sneak peak at the exhibits.

  • Nov 15 7:11pm - There were fireworks and various other events at the beginning of the gala. One of the features was an Oompah band that walked around the exhibit hall. (small ( 43K), large (171K))

    We also gave demos on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We had quite a few visitors to our demonstration. People were intrigued by the use of the haptic device to move molecules around in the simulation and we were also able to showcase the java applet that we can use to actually start and monitor the simulations.

  • Nov 17 12:34pm - I had the chance to wander around some of the other booths and this fish tank was such a well designed apparatus that I took a picture of it. The "tank" was just a widescreen LCD monitor with about an inch of water in a tank directly in front of the screen. The water had air bubbling up through it to give the tank an authentic look, but all of the fish (and more bubbles) were nothing more than a screen saver. Very cool. This was, by the way, in the NEC booth. (small ( 44K), large (161K))

  • Nov 18 6:29pm - Cleanup! The exhibit hall closed to attendees at 4pm on Thursday and we had to box everything up. We had kept a couple of small boxes with us, but we had sent our big boxes off to be stored with all of the other "empties". So, we had to wait.. and wait.. and wait.. (small ( 47K), large (172K))

  • Nov 6:36pm - Finally, after 2 and a half hours of waiting: our boxes! (small ( 47K), large (169K))

    Views of Portland

  • Nov 16 07:59am - This shot is from right outside our hotel (we stayed at the Marriott downtown on the waterfront) looking east across the Willamette River. You can see the street signs on the left side of the image. The street goes by two names: Front and Naito. The hotel considers itself on Naito, but the map we had when we were trying to find the hotel the first evening only listed Front. (small ( 53K), large (175K))

  • Nov 18 07:42am - Another shot from about the same place. This is looking more north, though. (small ( 60K), large (178K))

  • Nov 18 07:51am - The Marriott. We had one of the rooms in the center (which all had their own balcony). (small ( 63K), large (177K))

  • Nov 18 08:00am - The Steel Bridge. You can see the MAX light rail train crossing the bridge. (small ( 39K), large (167K))

  • Nov 18 08:01am - Downtown Portland skyline (with the Willamette River in the foreground). (small ( 39K), large (161K))

  • Nov 18 08:03am - The Oregon Convention Center. The center actually has two of the spikes. (You can only see one. The other one was to the right of the picture.) (small ( 39K), large (167K))