[AG-TECH] Symposium on Multicore and New Processing Technologies Aug 13 & 14

[Paul Mercer]

All
Please pass this information to anyone who you think might be  
interested.

thank you

Paul

Symposium on Multicore and New Processing Technologies

A symposium exploring the capabilities and use of new high  
performance computing (HPC) technologies is taking place Aug. 13 – 14  
on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in conference  
room 010 of the West Ridge Research Building. Space is limited for  
this free symposium and registration is required.
The two-day symposium is hosted by the Arctic Region Supercomputing  
Center, a national leader in the ongoing evaluation of current and  
next-generation processing technologies to improve the speed, memory  
functions and efficiencies of supercomputers. ARSC is a charter  
member of the National Science Foundation’s Center for High  
Performance Reconfigurable Computing (CHPRC).

According to ARSC Chief Scientist Greg Newby, the technology path of  
semiconductors coupled with user requirements has created a change in  
processing hardware. “Physical limitations and power challenges have  
led to the development of multicore processors,” he said. “At the  
same time, special-purpose processing units for non-HPC markets are  
able to provide substantial processing powers in some applications.  
These include field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), graphical  
processing units (GPUs) and gaming processors such as the CELL BE  
processor, which can be used as a standalone processor or as an  
application acceleration co-processor.”

Participants in the symposium will address the following questions:

How do applications scale with the multiplicity of cores, envisioning  
near-future petaFLOP systems with multiple cores in each CPU socket?
What hardware limitations and features, such as memory bandwidth and  
shared cache, impact scalability of applications?
How do graphical, gaming and reconfigurable processors compare in  
real-world applications?
Are existing operating systems adequate to deal with those  
technologies? If not, what is missing and how can shortcomings be  
addressed?
What programming tools are currently available for those  
technologies, and what new tools are needed?
“In order to address these and other questions of relevance to the  
high performance computing community, ARSC is taking the lead once  
again in this area by holding this summer symposium on multicore and  
new processing technologies,” Newby said.

Invited speakers and discussion panels will include a number of  
experts to pose and address these and other issues in greater details.

For more information about ARSC or to register for the symposium,  
visit www.arsc.edu or email Greg Newby at newby AT arsc.edu.




Proposed Agenda (subject to change)

Symposium on Multicore and New Processing Technologies
		 Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
			  August 13-14 2007

All times are Alaska time.   -9 UTC,  -4 eastern

Monday August 13

8:30  Registration and breakfast

9:00  Opening remarks.  Frank Williams, ARSC

9:15  Workshop overview.  Greg Newby, ARSC

9:30  Understanding 8-socket dual-core HPC performance at ARSC.
        Ed Kornkven, ARSC

10:30  Break

11:00  Cache coherency and other factors in multi-socket multi-core
        performance.  Abdullah Kayi, GWU

11:45  High level language characteristics for FPGA programming.
        Tarek El-Ghazawi, GWU

12:30  Lunch

1:30  Accelerating floating-point kernels via FPGAs.
        Gerald (Jerry) Morris, ERDC

2:15  Adaptive supercomputing at Cray.
        Charles Giefer, Cray

3:00  DNA and protein sequence alignment with high performance
        reconfigurable systems.  Greg Newby, ARSC

3:45  Break

4:00  FPGA libraries for HPC.  Olivier Serres & Miaoqing Huang, GWU


Tuesday August 14

8:30  Registration and Breakfast

9:00  Panel: Readiness of FPGAs for an HPC workload

9:45  Playstation CELL cluster experiences.  Preethan Nusum, GWU

10:30  Break

11:00  Comparison of FPGA and cell (PS3) implementations of a
        Brain-State-in-a-Box cognitive model.  Richard Linderman &
        Daniel Burns, AFRL

11:45  GPUs for general-purpose programming.  Greg Newby, ARSC

12:10  Discussion: Readiness of GPUs for an HPC workload

12:30  Lunch

1:30  Closing session: Formulating messages to developers, users,
        and vendors on the prospects of multicore processors and
        acceleration technology.  Greg Newby, moderator

2:30  Symposium ends



Paul Mercer
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
907 450 8649




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