After the global pandemic forced Hyperion Research to cancel the April 2020 HPC User Forum planned for Princeton, New Jersey, we decided to reach out to the HPC community in another way — by publishing a series of interviews with members of the HPC User Forum Steering Committee. Our hope is that these seasoned leaders' perspectives on HPC's past, present and future will be interesting and beneficial to others. To conduct the interviews, Hyperion Research engaged Rich Brueckner (1962-2020), president of insideHPC Media. We welcome comments and questions addressed to Steve Conway, sconway@hyperionres.com or Earl Joseph, ejoseph@hyperionres.com.
This interview is with Mike Bernhardt, who leads communications and outreach for the Exascale Computing Project. Mike is a 30-year veteran of the HPC community with a strong track record in strategic communications, marketing, public relations, branding and advertising. In the early 90s, Mike was the Director of Market Relations and Communications for the Supercomputer Systems Division of Intel Corporation. In 1994, he formed a strategic marketing firm, The Bernhardt Agency, for the HPC market segment. After selling The Bernhardt Agency in 2004, Bernhardt went on to build and sell two other widely respected, HPC-focused communications agencies, Noblemen Communications and Libra Strategic Communications. In 2010, Bernhardt launched subscription-based The Exascale Report, the first publication to bring an insider perspective to the emerging topic of exascale computing. In 2013, he returned to Intel as an HPC Community Evangelist, and in 2016 he joined the communications staff at ORNL to serve as the communications lead for the Exascale Computing Project. Bernhardt has been an active volunteer committee member of the IEEE/ACM SC conferences for more than two decades. He served as the Communications Chair for SC09.
The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. More than 75 HPC User Forum meetings have been held in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region since the organization's founding in 2000.