Once again, SXSW in Austin was an intense and inspiring week. As an experiment, I set out to use AI during the event as a thinking partner and to help write this blog afterward. More on that in the notes at the end.
What stood out this year is that the conversation about AI has fundamentally changed. In previous years it was mostly about applications, experiments and (promised) possibilities. AI appeared in every talk, but usually as a component, often in passing, because AI was simply trendy. This year was different. AI was back as the direct subject of conversation. Not as hype or a standalone technology, but as systemic technology: a foundation beneath everything.
On October 15th, 2025 SURF organized the first edition of Symposium on Accelerated Computing for Application Workflow (SACAW). The series aims to bring practitioners and scientific researchers from different scientific domains to discuss about accelerating scientific applications. Additionally, the event series and the feedback we receive from our community will help SURF to better support the acceleration of Dutch scientific applications which directly contribute to shaping national infrastructure efforts.
On June 27th, 2025 SURF and the Dutch Hardware Acceleration network organized the fifth edition of HWAcc and FIRE (FPGA Innovation Research Exchange) workshop. The theme of this event was on high-throughput data movement and data abstraction. We had presentations from industrial heavyweights such as NVIDIA and IBM as well as talks from Universities such as TU Delft, TU Darmstadt and University of Groningen.
SURF and the Dutch Hardware Acceleration network organized an international FIRE workshop at FPL conference. The conference was held in Leiden, and the FIRE workshop was on September 2nd, 2025.
On December 6th, 2024 SURF and the Dutch Hardware Acceleration network organized the fourth edition of HWAcc and FIRE (FPGA Innovation Research Exchange) workshop. The focus of this event was on recent architectural innovations in HW accelerators, including presentations from industrial heavyweights such as AMD and Samsung as well as talks from innovative startups such as Axelera AI. The workshop also featured two keynote talks from Riken supercomputer center and TU/e on recent developments in processor architecture.
SURF Research Bootcamp presenteert een deep dive in onderzoeksvaardigheden in de vorm van vijf praktische workshops. De informatieve workshops zijn bedoeld voor onderzoekers en onderzoeksondersteuners. Bij alle sessies is een laptop vereist.
On June 27th, 2024, SURF along with Dutch Hardware Acceleration network organized the third edition of FIRE (FPGA Innovation Research Exchange) workshop. The theme of this edition was about tools and hardware acceleration for AI workloads. The event featured a lineup of discussions centered around cutting-edge computing technologies for AI workload acceleration, showcasing multiple industrial players such as Innatera and Groq as well as developers of HW acceleration platforms such as AMD and Altera. In addition, the workshop featured two keynote talks on future computing platforms dedicated to quantum computing as well as cellular automata.
We’re excited to announce the release of a new report, "Preparing for a future with responsiblequantum technologies," published by SURF. As quantum technology continues to develop, our report explores the challenges and opportunities it presents, especially in relation to public values like privacy, security, fair access, and transparency.⚡ Download the report here: https://www.surf.nl/files/2024-10/responsible-quantum-report-surf-preparing-for-a-future-with-responsible-quantum-technologies-october-2024.pdf
The XR Pilot hub attended the Erasmus Data Summit last week; where the future of the workforce was the primary theme. There was a lot of focus on (Generative) AI and robotics; but was it relevant to our educational institutions?
The annual Erasmus Data Summit serves as a platform at Erasmus University Rotterdam, bringing together professionals from the South Holland region who are involved in data, AI, and Immersive technologies (Learn more at https://ecda.eur.nl/erasmus-data-summit/).
While XR didn’t make it to the main stage as much as we had hoped, we found intriguing questions to take home. The immersive tech fair after the main stage was a popular place to try new things and see where AI is meeting XR in practice.
