Workshop • Nov. 20, 2026 (Friday) • In conjunction with SC '26, Chicago, IL, USA

ECHO: The 1st International Workshop on Edge-Cloud-HPC Operational Continuum

About the Workshop

The ECHO workshop brings together researchers and practitioners across edge systems, cloud platforms, and high-performance computing (HPC) to formulate and advance a shared research agenda. In this workshop, we explore how HPC, edge, and cloud ecosystems can mutually advance physically dispersed, field-to-cloud, geo-distributed computing pipelines, especially where mission-critical field operations demand robust edge capabilities—and identify how system architectures must adapt to thrive across this continuum.

System design for modern workloads is end-to-end, e.g., driven by the sheer volume and rate of distributed data that can exceed the capability of on-scene devices. At the same time, high-fidelity data is continuously generated and acquired at the edge by bandwidth-hungry sources, such as scientific instruments, smart manufacturing arrays, and autonomous vehicle fleets. To satisfy strict real-time latency budgets and overcome intermittent network constraints, this raw data must be filtered, compressed, and partially processed near the sensors—often through in-situ feature extraction or low-latency AI inference. Only the highest-value signals and distilled datasets are then transmitted to the cloud, where they are aggregated to fuel resource-intensive tasks like massive-scale deep learning, digital twin simulations, and continuous model refinement.

Stewardship throughout the entire data lifecycle—encompassing data governance, data quality assurance, and policy-driven oversight—has shifted beyond a narrow focus on centralized task processing. Today, it demands sophisticated workflow orchestration and data management across a computing continuum that spans sensors, edge devices, and cloud platforms. At the same time, these use cases are highly performance-critical. They increasingly require capabilities long associated with HPC: efficient parallel execution, high-throughput data movement, high-performance I/O, accelerator utilization, topology-aware communication, and rigorous performance engineering.

Workshop Format

ECHO will be held as a half-day workshop on the morning of Nov. 20, 2026 (Friday), in conjunction with SC '26 in Chicago, IL. The program combines featured talks that set context, peer-reviewed paper and lightning sessions, a multi-stakeholder panel spanning academia, industry, and national labs, and interactive breakouts for structured ideation and report-backs.

The mix is intentional: guided breakouts drive problem formulation, lightning talks and feedback-oriented Q&A socialize early-stage and work-in-progress results, and mixed panels and breakout groups build bridges across the HPC, edge, distributed-systems, networking, and AI-infrastructure communities.

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: August 20, 2026 August 15, 2026 (AoE)
  • Author notification: September 4, 2026
  • Camera-ready deadline, with AD/AE: September 25, 2026 (AoE)

Call for Papers

We invite original submissions on systems, software, runtime, networking, storage, data management, performance engineering, and AI-driven methods related to the edge-cloud-HPC continuum.

Submission

Submit through the SC '26 submissions portal: select "Make a new submission" under the Submit panel, then choose "SC Workshop: ECHO".

Submissions have 6-page limit for short papers and 8-page limit for regular papers, both excluding the references. The submissions use the two-column ACM proceedings template. Papers will be reviewed by at least 3 reviewers in a single-blind process. Accepted papers will be published in the SC '26 proceedings.

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: August 20, 2026 August 15, 2026 (AoE)
  • Author notification: September 4, 2026
  • Camera-ready deadline, with AD/AE: September 25, 2026 (AoE)

Topics of Interest

In-scope topics. We invite contributions on, but not limited to:

  • Edge-cloud-HPC workflow integration and orchestration
  • Distributed data management, movement, staging, and reduction
  • Network-aware AI and communication-efficient learning systems
  • Performance portability across heterogeneous computing platforms
  • Cloud-backed scientific computing and HPC-on-cloud workflows
  • Resilience, reproducibility, and observability in distributed systems
  • Cross-layer optimization spanning applications, runtime, and infrastructure
  • Operational continuum support for digital twins and scientific AI
  • Performance optimization for edge/cloud AI
  • Interfaces between edge, cloud, and HPC systems
  • Cloud-based resource abstraction and virtualization for HPC workloads
  • Performance modeling and predictability under multi-tenancy/elastic provisioning
  • Efficient network-aware learning systems
  • Evaluation methodologies: benchmarks, metrics, reproducibility
  • Application-driven data movement optimization (e.g., smart agriculture, autonomous systems)

Out-of-scope (to maintain focus). We will de-emphasize contributions that do not connect to the workshop core question of what HPC technologies offer to edge/cloud computing or what changes in HPC-on-cloud/edge.

Organizing Committee

  • Dong Chen (Co-Chair), Colorado School of Mines, United States
  • Jiannan Tian (Co-Chair), Oakland University, United States
  • Jiajun Huang (Co-Chair), University of South Florida, United States

Steering Committee

  • Sheng Di, Institute Fellow of NAISE, Argonne National Laboratory, United States
  • Weisong Shi, IEEE Fellow, University of Delaware, United States
  • Shiqiang Wang, IEEE Fellow, University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Technical Program Committee

The list is sorted alphabetically by last name.

  • Daoce Wang (Chair), University of Nebraska Omaha, United States
  • Sheng Di, Argonne National Laboratory, United States
  • Liting Hu, University of California Santa Cruz, United States
  • Peng Jiang, University of Nebraska Omaha, United States
  • Qi Li, University of Oklahoma, United States
  • Wei-Zhen Liang, University of Nebraska Lincoln, United States
  • Robert Underwood, Argonne National Laboratory, United States
  • Shiqiang Wang, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
  • Miao Yin, University of Texas at Arlington, United States
  • Keyang Yu, Marquette University, United States
  • Kai Zhao, Florida State University, United States

Invited Talk

To be determined

The invited speaker and talk details will be announced ahead of the workshop. Check back closer to Nov. 20, 2026.

Welcome to Chicago

ECHO is co-located with SC '26 in Chicago, Illinois — the third-largest city in the United States, set on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Beyond the conference, the city is worth a few extra days: a walkable downtown framed by lakefront parks, a celebrated architectural skyline, world-class museums, deep music traditions (blues, jazz, house), and a food scene that ranges from neighborhood institutions to fine dining.

The convention venue sits a short walk from Lake Michigan and the Museum Campus, with the CTA 'L' connecting most of what's listed below.

Official tourism & city info

If you have an extra day

Architecture & skyline

Museums

Food & neighborhoods

Chicago is associated with deep-dish pizza, Italian beef, and Chicago-style hot dogs, but the day-to-day food scene is much broader. Choose Chicago's neighborhood guide ↗ is a good starting point — Pilsen, Logan Square, Chinatown, Hyde Park, Andersonville, and the West Loop are all reachable by CTA.

Getting there

The links above point to official tourism, municipal, and operator sites. ECHO is not affiliated with these organizations — they're provided as a convenience for attendees.