For a guy squeezed the Supercomputing Conference in between appearances on Larry King Live and Saturday Night Live, Al Gore delivered a surprisingly effective keynote address at SC09. Gore, who characterizes himself as a "recovering politician," is a techie at heart, having authored some of the original legislation that helped establish the supercomputing centers in the US.


His keynote speech centered on the notion that supercomputing has become one of the most powerful tools of civilization, and needs to be used as such to help solve the world's environmental problems. Gore's vision for the next decade involves using HPC resources not just to study the climate and environmental crisis, but to remedy them by employing supercomputing to help develop and design the next-generation of renewable energy systems. It was a timely reminder that HPC can have nobler purposes than squeezing profits from stock trades or finding more oil to burn.