Prizes are awarded for innovative approaches and to recognize outstanding achievements in high-performance networking and computing. Among the many awards are the the IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, the Gordon Bell Awards, the Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award, and special awards for the best technical paper, best student paper, best research poster, and HPC games winners.

New for SC2001 is the Advanced Network Applications Award. This award, sponsored by Gordon Bell, Jim Gray, and Qwest, has been established to recognize innovative wide-area network applications. A substantial cash prize will be awarded by a distinguished international committee.