---
title: "CARC team attending premier supercomputing event"
description: "A team from The University of New Mexico’s Center for Advanced Research Computing traveled to Dallas November 12-16 to participate in *SC18: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis*."
type: News
tags:
  - News
date: "2018-11"
generated:
  by: "process:scripts/port_legacy_pages.py"
  at: "2026-09-10T00:00:00Z"
sources:
  - id: carc-web
    resource: "https://carc.unm.edu/news--events/News/carc-at-sc18.html"
    title: "CARC team attending premier supercomputing event (carc.unm.edu)"
    author: "team:unm-carc"
---

# CARC team attending premier supercomputing event

<p class="carc-byline">November 2018</p>

![](/assets/sc18-team-carc-sc-booth.jpg)

A team from The University of New Mexico’s Center for Advanced Research
Computing traveled to Dallas November 12-16 to participate in
*[SC18](https://sc18.supercomputing.org/){target=_blank}**: The International
Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis*.
The CARC contingent and thousands of other people from all over the world met
at the event to network with peers, colleagues, and industry leaders. CARC
hosted a booth at the event that highlighted UNM’s research and researchers.

“It’s the premier technical and trade show in the industry so it’s a great
place to meet with colleagues to discuss current challenges and new approaches
in large scale and high-performance computing,” said CARC director Patrick
Bridges. “We also met with vendors to understand what products are available
to help our researchers more effectively conduct cutting edge research. And
it’s a way to publicize the great research UNM and our partners are doing.”

The CARC team included Bridges, CARC unit administrator Tracy Wenzl, research
assistant professor Matthew Fricke, network and storage specialist Hussein
Al-Azzawi, systems analyst Jose Sanchez, and research assistants Keira Haskins
and William “Pepper” Marts.

The CARC booth featured [digital
posters](../research/sc18-research-posters.md) that
highlighted research done using CARC resources. Projects ranged from an
examination of the genetics of viruses to Martian robot swarms to a consortium
effort that will revolutionize New Mexico’s electrical grid to incorporate
solar and wind power. Find out more about the research projects here.

Al-Azzawi headed early to SC18. He’s a member of the SCinet team, a group that
assembled the event’s powerful high-capacity network infrastructure.

“The job was to build the fastest network on earth in a week. Network speed is
about 4Tbps,” Al-Azzawi explained.

“Most event networks are for a few hundred people with cellphones,” Bridges
said. “This one was for 12,000 people with laptops and major vendors with
supercomputers. It supported companies like Cray and Intel and all the
supercomputing centers. They had to put it up, support it through the week,
take it down, and do it again next year. It’s very technologically
challenging.”

As the director of CARC, Bridges met with peers in the Coalition of Academic
Supercomputing Centers to discuss strategic planning of supercomputing in the
United States. Most of the CARC group also attended seminars, tutorials, and
panel discussions and present their own research projects.

“So, there’s a good professional development aspect of SC18 for our staff and
research assistants,” Bridges said.

For more information about SC18, go to the event
[website](https://sc18.supercomputing.org/){target=_blank}. CARC posted about
SC18 on
[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/centerforadvancedresearchcomputing/){target=_blank}
and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/unmcarc){target=_blank}.