From July 17 to 19, 2025, the eighth edition of the HPC Summer School was held, organized by Cybercolombia in collaboration with SCALAC. It was consolidated as a distributed learning experience across 10 universities in Colombia, with the active participation of 150 students connected from institutions such as Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad EAFIT, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Universidad de Los Andes, Universidad del Norte, Universidad de Cartagena, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, and Universidad del Valle.

Over the course of three intensive days, participants experienced a unique interdisciplinary and hands-on training program covering key topics such as data science, image processing, artificial intelligence, and data parallelism. This edition marked a milestone by incorporating a distributed approach, strengthening inter-institutional collaboration and expanding access to cutting-edge knowledge in high-performance computing.

The School included keynote sessions and practical workshops led by international experts. Mario Ruiz conducted a hands-on  Neural Processing Unit (NPU) Programming for AI” and  Thomas Papatheodore  “ROCm and HIP  Lab “, both from AMD University Program. Aurelio Vivas from Universidad de Los Andes delivered an intensive session on data parallelism using Dask.

One of the highlights of the event was the talk by Dr. Javier Aula-Blasco, who gave a presentation on understanding Large Language Models (LLMs), one of the most influential technologies in the current field of artificial intelligence.

Later, Alfonso Ladino-Rincón from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gave the talk "Fast, FAIR, and Scalable: Managing Big Data in HPC with Zarr", which focused on how traditional scientific data formats must evolve toward specialized on-demand reading interfaces to enhance access to large-scale data.

The sessions also featured the participation of experts such as Siddhisanket Raskar (Argonne National Laboratory), who delivered a talk on the future of AI accelerators; and Carlos Álvarez (Tecnológico de Monterrey), who demonstrated how AI frameworks leverage parallel programming through real examples on a cluster.

For the past seven years, Cybercolombia in collaboration with SCALAC, has promoted the development of young talent in HPC, and this eighth edition reinforces its commitment to training a new generation of researchers and professionals equipped to face future technological challenges.

Thanks to all the speakers, host universities, and students for making this edition possible and encourages everyone to continue building learning networks that drive the digital future of Latin America.

Latin America Maintains Its Presence in the TOP500 Announced at ISC High Performance 2025

During the latest edition of the ISC High Performance conference (ISC 2025), held from June 10 to 13 at the Congress Center Hamburg, the highly anticipated update of the TOP500 was unveiled. This international ranking highlights the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Latin America reaffirmed its presence on the list through the contributions of Argentina and Brazil, which continue to establish themselves as regional leaders in high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

Argentina Holds Strong with Clementina XXI

Argentina retained its position in the TOP500 with the Clementina XXI supercomputer, a Lenovo-developed machine ranked 232nd. This system is installed at the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (SMN) and is part of a national initiative to strengthen capabilities in climate forecasting and environmental modeling.

This supercomputer serves as a critical asset for climate science in the region, enabling progress in complex simulations, high-resolution weather analysis, and mitigation strategies in the face of climate change.

Brazil Expands Its Regional Leadership

Brazil, for its part, continues to strengthen its regional leadership as the Latin American country with the highest number of entries in the TOP500. In the previous list, published in November 2024, Brazil increased its total to nine classified supercomputers, adding one more system compared to the earlier edition. This growth reflects the sustained investment by Petrobras, LNCC, and various academic and industrial laboratories.

Brazilian supercomputers range from GPU-accelerated DGX H100 clusters used for AI training to petascale x86 platforms. These developments illustrate the country’s sustained efforts to modernize its computing capabilities in areas such as health, genomics, energy, materials science, artificial intelligence, and data science.

Regional Momentum Toward Technological Sovereignty

The continued presence of Argentina and the growth of Brazil in the TOP500 not only demonstrate technical progress, but also reflect a shared strategic vision: building homegrown HPC capabilities as a key tool for sovereign development in science, innovation, and data-driven decision-making.

In the broader context of ISC 2025—where topics such as artificial intelligence, data center sustainability, and global cooperation were also addressed—Latin America presented itself as a region committed to strengthening its digital infrastructure and actively participating in the global conversation on the future of advanced computing.

For more technical details see the full June 2025 TOP500 list released at ISC 2025: top500.org