Dear all, the steering committee had reconvened and I'm glad I can present you two exciting changes we made based on the feedback we heared from the community: the 10 Node I/O challenge and privacy changes to the submission process. The purpose of these changes is to encourage submissions. === 10 Node challenge === At SC, we will announce another IO-500 winner for this separate 10 node challenge. This challenge is conducted using the regular IO-500 benchmark, however, with the rule that exactly 10 client nodes must be used to run the benchmark (one exception is find, which may use 1 node). You may use any shared storage with, e.g., any number of servers. We will announce the result in a separate derived list and in the full list but not on the ranked IO-500 list at io500.org. When submitting for the IO-500 list, you can opt-in for "Participate in the 10 node challenge only", then we won't include the results into the ranked list. Other 10 node submission will be included in the full list and in the ranked list. This brings us to the following definitions. === Lists === For the lists, we have at the moment the following: * The "ranked" IO-500 list, this is the one prominently shown at IO500.org It shows for each site and system only the best result. It actually is a derived list from: * The "full list" which contains any result even though it may not be the best for a site, you are encouraged to submit multiple! With the 10 node challenge, we will have another derived list from the "full list" that only shows results submitted for exactly 10 nodes. These changes come with extended privacy options during the submission process. === Privacy === The SC release of the list will also include the name of the submitter (or team) to give them the credit they deserve. During the submission process one will be able to individually opt-out the release of certain information: 1) The name of the submitter/team 2) The file system 3) The name of the site and supercomputer Therefore, if 1-3 is ticked, the results will be anonymous! At the moment, we envision that after an embargo period the information (2 and 3) are revealed and updated automatically in the list. The period is either 3 years, or after the machine is decommissioned (will be asked during the submission process). The name of the submitter can remain private (forever) if chosen. I hope you agree that these changes and the new challenge are highly encouraging to submit. We will update the text on the webpage shortly. Comments are welcome. Best, Julian