As we embark on a new year, I extend my warmest greetings to the global AI and HPC community. I trust you enjoyed a restful holiday season and have returned with renewed energy to tackle the exciting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in HPC development.
With several tens of Exascale systems now operational, we find ourselves at a fascinating juncture, wondering whether Zettascale computing will be achievable. Given the rapid growth in AI system sizes within private industry, I would not be surprised if we reach this milestone this year, at least for the low precision computations prevalent in the AI domain. This development will be highly beneficial to our community, as it will not only yield faster systems for double-precision calculations crucial for traditional HPC workloads but also significantly accelerate lower-precision computations, enabling advancements in AI research and applications. Indeed, this year will mark a pivotal shift towards the convergence of AI and HPC, with AI-optimized hardware increasingly utilized for both AI training/inference and traditional HPC simulations.
The year 2025 will be defined by unprecedented large-scale deployments driven by industry. These deployments will leverage Ethernet-based interconnects, and we anticipate the release of the first Ultra Ethernet specification designed explicitly for extreme-scale AI and HPC networks. This year will be known as the year of extreme scaling. This scaling encompasses not only interconnection networks but also the very fabric of our community, fostering connections among researchers from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Furthermore, we will witness scaling across diverse areas of interest, spanning from traditional HPC paradigms and MPI-based applications to emerging generative AI trends, including Large Language Models (LLMs), agent-based systems, reasoning frameworks, and quantum computing systems pushing the boundaries of computational capability.
At ISC 2025, we anticipate a record number of attendees eager to engage with the latest advancements in the large-scale interconnection of AI and HPC accelerators, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange between the AI and HPC communities. Join us in person at ISC in Hamburg to reconvene in our HPC and AI circles. Let’s greet the future of AI and HPC with excitement and openness.
Wishing you all a prosperous and productive new year!
All the best,
Torsten Hoefler
ISC 2025 Program Chair
