The annual Test of Time Award (ToTA) recognizes an outstanding paper that has deeply influenced the HPC discipline. It is a mark of historical impact and recognition that the paper has changed HPC trends. The ToTA also acts as an incentive for researchers and students to send their best work to the SC Conference, and as a tool for understanding what makes lasting results in the HPC discipline. Papers appearing in the SC Program 10 to 25 years prior to the current conference year are eligible for this award.
Award Presentation ScheduleTuesday, November 18, 2025
Test of Time Award ChairWilliam D. Gropp, University of Illinois, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), USA
Test of Time Award nominations open March 8, 2024.
The Globus Striped GridFTP Framework and Server (doi: 10.1109/SC/2005.72)
William Allcock, John Bresnahan, Rajkumar Kettimuthu, Michael Link, Catalin Dumitrescu, Ioan Raicu, Ian Foster, Argonne, IL, USA
(Published at SC05)
First published at SC05, this important paper addressed one of the central challenges in supercomputing at the time: how to move very large amounts of data both reliably and securely, without sacrificing performance. The authors’ solution, the striped GridFTP framework, made it possible for multiple servers and clients to work together in parallel, significantly increasing the scale and speed of transfers. At the time, these capabilities allowed data to move at rates far beyond what existing tools could support, while also serving thousands of users simultaneously.
The influence of this work has been profound. For nearly two decades, GridFTP provided the foundation for scientific discovery in many fields: enabling the movement of telescope sky survey data, supporting analysis from large particle accelerators, and helping transfer vast genomic datasets. It became a trusted and widely adopted tool for the global research community — well before today’s cloud-based approaches were available.
8 MAR 2025
Nominations Open
26 MAY 2025
Nominations Close
26 SEP 2025
Award Announcement
The ToTA is presented annually to a single paper published in the SC Conference Proceedings 10 to 25 years ago.
A paper can receive the award only once.
The nomination form includes a statement (maximum 250 words) describing why the paper should be nominated, including its impact and influence on trends in HPC. In addition, you must upload the full paper in PDF format.
A committee formed each year by the General Conference Chair and the Technical Program Chair selects the award winner. The winner is announced in September before the SC Conference.
ToTA winners receive a certificate, plaque, and a cash prize.
On Tuesday, November 18, the author(s) or an expert are invited to give a talk at the Test of Time Award Presentation explaining the significance and impact the paper has had in HPC.
In addition, the award winner is invited to attend the Thursday Awards Ceremony at which they will be recognized.
Chung-hsing Hsu, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Wuchun Feng, Virginia Tech; “A Power-Aware Run-Time System for High Performance Computing (Published at SC05)
George Karypis and Vipin Kumar, University of Minnesota, “Multilevel Algorithms for Multi-Constraint Graph Partitioning” (Published at SC98)
The BlueGene/L Team (114 authors), accepted by Jose Moreira and Jeffrey S. Vetter, “An Overview of the BlueGene/L Supercomputer” (Published at SC02)
Vasily Volkov and James Demmel, “Benchmarking GPUs to Tune Dense Linear Algebra” (Published at SC08)
John Salmon and Mike Warren, “A Parallel Hashed Oct-Tree N-Body Algorithm” (Published at SC93)
Michael Wolfe, “More Iteration Space Tiling” (Published at SC89)
Jack Dongarra and Clint Whaley, “Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software” (Published at SC98)
D. Bailey, E. Barszcz, J. Barton, D. Browning, R. Carter, L. Dagum, R. Fatoohi, P. Frederickson, T. Lasinski, R. Schreiber, H. Simon, V. Venkatakrishnan, and S. Weeratunga, “The NAS Parallel Benchmarks – Summary and Preliminary Results” (Published at SC91)
Bruce Hendrickson and Rob Leland, “A Multi-level Algorithm for Partitioning Graphs” (Published at SC95)
William Pugh, “The Omega Project and Constraint Based Analysis Techniques in High Performance Computing” (Published at SC91)
Z. Fan, F. Qiu, A. Kaufman, and S. Yoakum-Stover, “GPU Cluster for High Performance Computing,” SC04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2004, pp. 47-47, doi: 10.1109/SC.2004.26
Shaw DE, RO Dror, JK Salmon, et al. 2009. “Millisecond-scale molecular dynamics simulations on Anton,” In Proceedings of the Conference on High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC09), Portland, OR, USA, pp. 1-11, doi: 10.1145/1654059.1654126
Create an account in the online submission system and complete the form. A sample form can be viewed before signing in.
If you have questions about Test of Time Award nominations, please contact the program committee.
Submission, application, and nomination deadlines for all programs and awards, the housing open date, the early registration deadline, and more – all in one place.
