Dedication and Determination Powers SCinet to Infiniband and Beyond

In its first year, SCinet provided 245 megabits per second of wide-area capacity in support of SC91 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Flash forward to SCinet’s most recent installation, which delivered 5.01 terabits per second of wide-area capacity to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas.

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During the week of SC, SCinet becomes the most powerful and advanced temporary network on Earth, connecting the SC community to the world. Every year, industry, academia, and government experts volunteer to design, build, and administer the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure. SCinet not only provides internet connectivity for conference attendees, it pushes the boundaries of networking technologies and innovations through workshops, demos, and collaborative opportunities.

Over the years, thousands of people from the HPC community have participated in SCinet. Most recently, 175 dedicated and determined volunteers from academia, government agencies, and industry representing 5 countries, 30 states, and 78 organizations performed this tremendous undertaking. SCinet was supported by 29 contributing organizations who loaned software, services, and hardware valued at $70 million.

SCinet is also a mentoring and networking incubator for its volunteers, offering leadership training to senior-level participants. SCinet supported 20 student volunteers, including 2 lead student volunteers, and 6 WINS (Women in IT Networking at SC) awardees. Their collaboration not only generates personal growth that benefits participants’ home institutions, but also results in innovation which enables exhibitors and researchers at SC to demonstrate what is possible when they have access to cutting-edge resources.

A Colossal Achievement

SCinet takes two years to plan, one month to build, one week to run, and one day to tear down.

Five semi trailers transported 231 pallets of equipment to the convention center. SCinet deployed 12.77 miles of fiber, 10,400 pounds of WiFi 6E-enabled wireless equipment, 3,410 fiber patches, and 102 exhibitor booth connections, all of which consumed 32.0 kilowatts of power.

In order to achieve the installation, some volunteers averaged 30,000 steps a day during the week of SC!

Aggregate WAN Traffic as Measured at SC22

Global Collaboration