More than 2 million hours of processing time on some of the world's most powerful computers could help Oak Ridge NationalComputational scientists using the Cray XT3 architecture -- and those interested in the XT3 -- will gather in Nashville for three days in February to exchange their knowledge and experience.

The First Annual Cray XT3 Technical Workshop-USA is modeled after a series of successful Cray workshops held in Europe over the past three years. Sponsored by Cray, the Department of Energy's National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Cray User Group, it is being held to encourage communication among the various XT3 sites.

"Over the 18 months the XT3 has been in operation, many users have achieved outstanding results," said John Levesque, director of the Cray Center of Excellence. "During the workshop, we expect users to share these results and leave with solutions."

The workshop builds on the work of the Cray center, which was established at the NCCS to encourage communication among the large XT3 sites.

"Running on tens of thousands of processors is difficult," Levesque said, "even on an excellent system like the XT3. Record-breaking performance is achieved only by thoroughly understanding the interworkings of MPI, portals, and the Opteron processor. I cannot think of a better medium to gather the information required to achieve outstanding performance on the XT3."

A keynote address will be delivered by Steve Scott, Cray's chief technology officer, and talks will be presented by XT3 developers and users alike. Session titles include:

• Optimization of the XT3,
• The XT Line From Adams to Baker,
• AMD's Quad Core Opteron,
• Optimization of XT Libraries for the Opteron, and
• Using Cray Performance Tools.