SovAISCC: Sovereign AI Supercomputing Cloud Workshop

Held in conjunction with SC26.

Time & Location 

TBA

Location: TBA

Please refer to the SC26 Schedule for the most up to date information. 

Workshop Agenda

The workshop will be held in mini-symposium format with invited speakers.

Agenda:

• TBA

The call for participation is open for SC26, please consider participating at the SovAISCC event to engage with us  for more diverse speakers.

Workshop Abstract and Topics

As the HPC landscape shifts toward massive-scale AI infrastructures, the pursuit of a sovereign supercomputing ecosystem has become paramount. However, recent industry consolidations—most notably the acquisition of SchedMD (Slurm) by NVIDIA—have shattered the illusion that open-source software (OSS) is a guaranteed failsafe against vendor influence. While OSS and open standards remain the preferred foundation for reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and avoiding traditional lock-in, the "open-core" and "corporate-stewardship" models introduce new risks of strategic divergence.

This workshop will explore the paradox of modern HPC sovereignty: how can sites build autonomous, transparent infrastructures when the most critical "open" components are increasingly controlled by hardware vendors? We will evaluate the current state of open-source tools within supercomputing environments and discuss whether true sovereignty requires a transition from passive consumption toward active community governance or strategic forking. Initiatives such as OpenCHAMI and the recently established High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) represent a shift toward a "foundation-first" approach to software longevity. However, the persistent tension between community-led governance and the necessity of official vendor support remains a pivotal variable for large-scale production sites. Ultimately, this workshop seeks to move beyond an idealized view of open-source software toward a pragmatic, risk-aware strategy for the next generation of sovereign on-premises infrastructure.

Included within the scope are technical and governance aspects encompassing:

• Open source and open standards for AI factories, supercomputing, and cloud operations.

• Sovereign AI/HPC motivating use cases and state-of-the-practice.

• Resource management and scheduling systems for AI, HPC, and cloud technologies.

• Vendor alternatives for software-defined infrastructure (SDI).

• Security benefits and limitations of using a sovereign stack.

• Strategies for "sovereignty-by-design" to protect against license shifts.

Workshop Goals:

1. Community Building: Bridge the gap between interdisciplinary communities (HPC centers, cloud architects, and AI infrastructure providers) to foster a sovereign ecosystem.

2. Ideation & Strategy: Move beyond technical presentations to strategic discussions on governance, specifically addressing the "single point of contact" support model vs. community-led stacks.

3. Socialization of Early Works: Provide a platform for emerging open-governance projects (like OpenCHAMI) to present roadmaps and gather requirements from production sites.

4. Professional Development: Equip attendees with the knowledge to negotiate SLAs that permit deep-stack sovereignty without assuming full hardware-firmware incompatibility risks.

Important Dates

• Submission deadline: Early September, 2026

• Notification of Acceptance: Late September, 2026

• Program Published: November, 2026

Workshop Committees 

Organizing Committee

Organizing Committee (supercompcloud@googlegroups.com)

• • David Y. Hancock, Indiana University

  • Winona G. Snapp-Childs, Indiana University

  • François Tessier, Inria

  • Sadaf Alam, University of Bristol

  • Maxime Martinasso, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre

  • Alex Lovell-Troy, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Committee members are currently being solicited for future events. If you would like to participate in the committee please contact the workshop organizers at supercompcloud@googlegroups.com.