Winter Hackathon and SupercomputingAsia

The TPC Winter 2025 Hackathon was organized by the Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC). TPC is an emerging collective of national institutions, including RIKEN, U.S. DOE laboratories, universities, and companies, that focuses on AI for Science. Currently, more than 90 organizations participate in TPC. TPC convenes hackathons to bring together individuals and groups who are developing, training, and harnessing large-scale models along with those operating the high-performance computing (HPC) systems necessary for model training. TPC supports collaboration among innovators in the fields of artificial intelligence, supercomputing, and data science.

The TPC Winter 2025 Hackathon group photo, March 2025, Kobe, Japan

The TPC Winter 2025 Hackathon was the first time the hackathon was held in Japan and was supported by the RIKEN TRIP initiative (AGIS) and R-CCS. The program included a full-day tutorial and a tour of the supercomputer Fugaku, which was followed by two days of breakout sessions. The agenda included (1)  Scientific Skills, Safety, and Trust Evaluation (EVAL), (2) Model Architecture and Performance Evaluation (MAPE), and (3) Life Sciences Challenge Problems (BIO).

The event was a major success. Nearly 60 passionate individuals from Japan, the USA, Spain and other countries participated. Each breakout session was centered around fostering collaboration and exchanging ideas. The hackathon strengthened the bonds within the global community and served as a great opportunity for connecting to and learn from each other. Some teams planned to continue working together at a post-event. We hope that this event will lead to more people from Japan to participate in future events.

SupercomputingAsia (SCA), co-organized by high performance computing (HPC) centers from Singapore, Japan, Australia, and Thailand, is an annual conference that encompasses an umbrella of notable supercomputing and allied events in the region and beyond. Its goal is to promote a vibrant and shared HPC ecosystem in Asia.

In addition to introducing their recent research activity and the supercomputer Fugaku, R-CCS actively promoted SCA 2026 which will be held in Osaka in January 2026, together with the International Conference on High Performance Computing in the Asia-Pacific Region (HPCAsia). HPCAsia is an international conference series in the Asia Pacific region on HPC technologies, which fosters the exchange of ideas, research results, and case studies related to all high performance computing issues.

Satoshi Matsuoka (Director of R-CCS), Mrs Josephine TEO (Minister for Digital Development and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs), and Dr. Terence Hung (Chief Executive of National Supercomputing Center)

In the closing ceremony, Satoshi Matsuoka, Director of RIKEN R-CCS, gave his remarks and announced that SCA/HPCAsia 2026 will be held in Japan for the first time.  He then showed a promotional video clip that previewed the conference and the attractiveness of Osaka and the Kansai region.

At the end of the ceremony, the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) in Singapore, host organization of SCA 2025, handed over the flag to the General Chair of SCA/HPCAsia 2026, who proceeded to share their 2026 ambitions with the audience.

SupercomputingAsia (SCA), co-organized by high performance computing (HPC) centers from Singapore, Japan, Australia, and Thailand, is an annual conference that encompasses an umbrella of notable supercomputing and allied events in the region and beyond. Its goal is to promote a vibrant and shared HPC ecosystem in Asia.

In addition to introducing their recent research activity and the supercomputer Fugaku, R-CCS actively promoted SCA 2026 which will be held in Osaka in January 2026, together with the International Conference on High Performance Computing in the Asia-Pacific Region (HPCAsia). HPCAsia is an international conference series in the Asia Pacific region on HPC technologies, which fosters the exchange of ideas, research results, and case studies related to all high performance computing issues.

Satoshi Matsuoka (Director of R-CCS), Mrs Josephine TEO (Minister for Digital Development and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs), and Dr. Terence Hung (Chief Executive of National Supercomputing Center)

In the closing ceremony, Satoshi Matsuoka, Director of RIKEN R-CCS, gave his remarks and announced that SCA/HPCAsia 2026 will be held in Japan for the first time.  He then showed a promotional video clip that previewed the conference and the attractiveness of Osaka and the Kansai region.

At the end of the ceremony, the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) in Singapore, host organization of SCA 2025, handed over the flag to the General Chair of SCA/HPCAsia 2026, who proceeded to share their 2026 ambitions with the audience.