Version 2.6 – Updated 18 February – 11:50 am

Panels at Multicore World are fully interactive: each panel has a main topic, with 3-4 core questions.

The Moderator invites each panelist to give brief comments on the topic and questions. After that we focus on discussion among panelists and full interaction with the audience. Real debate. And lots of fun.

Also check Programme and full Speakers List

Panel 1 – “Sovereign capabilities”

Monday 16 February 2026 – 4:25 pm – 5:15 pm

Ilkay Altintas (UCSD, US), Manish Parashar (University of Utah, US), Deidre Cleland (ESNZ, New Zealand), Emily Casleton (Los Alamos National Labs, LANL, US)

Building resilient data ecosystems that balance open data / open science with sovereign capabilities, open infrastructure and global roadmaps.

1) What do you think “Sovereign AI” is?

Can others than the Big Tech companies / hyperscalers develop AI based solutions and platforms. If so, what would that take?

2) Is there a need to regulate AI? If so, at what level and how? Would that be an innovation engine or limitation?

3) Which would be your ideal model for responsible computing?

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Panel 2 – “Convergence HPC/AI/Quantum -without the hype”

Tuesday 17 February 2026 – 4:15 pm – 5:15 pm

Satoshi Matsuoka (RIKEN, Japan), Andrew Wheeler (HPE, US), Patricia Gonzalez-Guerrero (LBNL, US), Nathan DeBardeleben (LANL, US), Will Kamp (Kamputed, New Zealand).

Technical and advanced computing must “ride the wave” of AI-driven infrastructure while “building the future” through deliberate investments in new foundations (*)

1) Semiconductor constraints dictate new approaches, end-to-end hardware/software co-design is essential, prototyping at scale is required to test new ideas, and the space of leading-edge HPC applications is far broader now than in the past: is there a convergence happening driven by AI infrastructure?

2) Who do you think is leading this convergence: a country or a region? A group of companies? A specific area of an industry?

3) What’s happening “elsewhere”? – Do you have a global perspective of the technical and economic reality and its consequences?

(*) “Ride the Wave, Build the Future: Scientific Computing in an AI World” – Jack Dongarra, Daniel Reed, and Dennis Gannon (February 2026)

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Panel 3 – “Infrastructure robustness” 

Wednesday 18 February 2026 – 4:15 pm – 5:15 pm

Ben Mintz (ORNL, US), Ruud van der Pas (OpenMP, The Netherlands), Luca Carloni (Columbia University, US), Dhabaleswar K. Panda (Ohio State University, US), Don Christie (Catalyst IT, New Zealand).

We all know about infrastructure outages that have had a huge impact on society. Such outages could be widespread, like the Crowdstrike bug, or relatively small scale, but with a very disruptive impact, like an airline check-in system that is unavailable. In the worse case scenario it is a combination of these two.

1) Do we know what is done to avoid such outages, or at least minimize the impact? Is there something big missing in such attempts?

2) Is this where AI could come to the rescue? To start with, could we use AI to identify worse case scenario’s?

3) Can AI help to suggest fixes? Can we go further and let AI automatically prevent outages? If so, do we actually want this?

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Panel 4 – “Infrastructure scaling and resource consumption” 

Thursday 19 February 2026 – 3:35 pm – 4:20 pm

Dan Stanzione (TACC, US), Taisuke Boku (HAIRDESC, Japan), Simon McIntosh-Smith (BriCS, UK), Jess Robertson (ESNZ, New Zealand)

The AI data centres are like fossil fuel. We need them, or so we think, but nobody wants them in their backyard. And on top of
draining all the energy out of your neighborhood, your job is replaced by AI.

1) Scaling AI “responsibly” from the Lab to Society – Moving from raw compute to validated AI mission-ready models. How do we define a quality metric for AI based solutions?

2) Energy -the next frontier. New suppliers – new rules?

3) Is anyone “investing strategically” for the long-term? Genesis Mission? How to balance national/regional interests while dealing with trillion dollar companies?

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Version 2.6 – Updated 18 February – 11:50 am