He noted that the country has invested in supercomputers as far back as 1988, resulting in academic research and economic dividends in the form of problem-solving and data-analysis solutions that "would be otherwise impossible". "It would have been impossible too, if the early investments, capabilities and infrastructure were not done with a certain leap into the unknown, and if we did not have certain faith in the possibilities that were afforded," he said.
He also acknowledged the role of stakeholders in HPC. "Pioneers, stalwarts, academics, researchers, visionary business-people looking to see what the supercomputing industry can do for us as a society – your hard work and dedication to the efforts and research in the area have made new technologies arrive faster and proliferate deeper into society, while inspiring people to imagine what would be possible. To all our researchers, scientists, professors and many other individuals – thank you, and congratulations on your success," he said.
Dr Puthucheary added, "While we have to have that long term vision, we need to start small with whatever we currently have. We then need to iterate and going forward, build that type of interoperability and resilience that allow us to grow. We want to take the opportunities afforded by HPC, AI and our Smart Nation vision, and drive these technologies and opportunities to every corner of our economy and our society. Our society has to be 100% inclusive."
Some of Singapore's recent initiatives in this space include AI Singapore, a partnership among the government, research institutions, AI companies and startups in May 2017, to develop AI products and develop talent.
"We are not going to develop these outcomes unless we have a strong, deep and long-standing pipeline of talent. Students that are inspired, academics doing research, the professionals that work alongside them, and industry development visions – we need that long, multidecade horizon of talent development in order to fulfil the vision that AI Singapore is part of," Dr Puthucheary said.
"Singapore not only needs to be open to the rest of the world, it also needs to be able to attract conferences like these, people like you, and speakers from around the world – people with grand ideas."
Outstanding ideas from anywhere in the world have to be accepted as well, to "catalyse and feature in our future", he further said. "We have to hold on to these ideas, and make sure that we support them institutionally, philosophically, and also from an investment point-of-view. We have started on this journey, but we have a long way to go with many things we need to do to maximally exploit the opportunities afforded to us. But I think we are off to a running start, given that we have been able to do these types of things for many years."
Organised by the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, the three-day conference has a special focus on the intersection of HPC and AI and the practical applications that emerge as a result.
SCA18 will also be the launch platform of the first-ever APAC HPC-AI Competition, jointly organised by the HPC-AI Advisory Council (HPCAC), a global organisation for HPC and AI research, outreach, and education, as well as by the NSCC. The competition is open to teams in tertiary institutions in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region who wish to demonstrate their programming ability in the traditional and emerging disciplines in the field of HPC and AI.
The competition that aims to educate, empower, and bring together the next generation of technology leaders. Participants will get to showcase their HPC and AI expertise. The winning team receives a cash prize and will also represent the APAC region at the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) at ISC 2019 in Germany.
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