HPC Happenings
Submit Your Scientific Visualizations for Display at SC13!
Submission Deadline – October 18, 2013
A loop scientific visualizations will run before and after the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday plenary sessions. Submit your visualizations to be part of this loop! Videos will be projected on a 32’ by 18’ high-definition surface and should have at least a 1920x1080 pixel resolution at 30 fps in a standard Quicktime or Windows codec format. To submit your visualization, please visit http://submissions.supercomputing.org. Questions can be addressed to walkinvideo@info.supercomputing.org
XSEDE Monthly HPC Series: OpenMP
October 2, 2013 via webinar
XSEDE is pleased to announce a regular series of remote workshops on High Performance Computing topics. These hands-on workshops provide a convenient way for researchers to learn about the latest techniques and technologies of current interest in HPC. We are currently accepting satellite sites for the October 2 workshop on OpenMP. Address any questions regarding course content to John Urbanic (urbanic@psc.edu) and questions regarding registration to Tom Maiden (tmaiden@psc.edu).
IEEEXtreme 24-Hour Programming Competition to Open Soon
October 26, 2013 – Competition Date
IEEEXtreme is a global challenge in which teams of IEEE Student members, supported by an IEEE Student Branch, advised and proctored by an IEEE member, compete in a 24-hour time span against each other to solve a set of programming problems. All participants must be IEEE members (Student member or Graduate Student member only) to register and compete in the competition. IEEE membership numbers are required. Participants must compete as part of a team of up to three IEEE Student or Graduate Student members. Teams should only include a maximum of two graduate student members per team. For more information and to register your team, please visit https://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/students/competitions/xtreme/57664_IEEEXtreme24HourProgrammingChallenge.html.
Professional Development at SC13: A Q&A with the Tutorials Chair
For many, attending SC13 is a key part of their annual professional development. In addition to the research and emerging technologies demonstrated on the exhibition floor, the papers, and the workshops, SC offers a unique and rich selection of full- and half-day tutorials. These courses are taught by the HPC community’s experts in today’s technologies, and by the pioneers creating the technologies of tomorrow. To learn more about the course offerings this year, please visit http://insidehpc.com/2013/09/03/professional-development-sc13-qa-tutorials-chair/ to read a Q&A with SC13 Tutorials Chair Bronis de Supinski of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In the News
National Science Foundation Appoints new Division Director for the Division of Computing and Communications Foundations
CCC Blog
Last month, Dr. Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), announced the appointment of Dr. Rao Kosaraju as the new Division Director for the Computing and Communications Foundations (CCF) Division within the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. To read further, please visit http://www.cccblog.org/2013/08/30/national-science-foundation-appoints-new-division-director-for-the-division-of-computing-and-communications-foundations/.
HPCwire Live! Atlanta's Big Data Kick Off Week Meets HPC: What does the future holds for HPC? (Video)
Join HPCwire Editor Nicole Hemsoth and Dr. David Bader from Georgia Tech as they take center stage on opening night at Atlanta's first Big Data Kick Off Week, filmed in front of a live audience. Nicole and David look at the evolution of HPC, today's big data challenges, discuss real world solutions, and reveal their predictions. Exactly what does the future holds for HPC? To watch the video, please visit http://www.eclipsewebmedia.com/big-data-week-datanami/.
UC San Diego’s Liangfang Zhang Makes MIT Technology Review’s Annual Innovators Under 35 List
MIT Technology Review has named Liangfang Zhang, a professor of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, among the top 35 young innovators of 2013. For over a decade, the global media company has recognized a list of exceptionally talented technologists whose work has great potential to transform the world. Zhang, who joined the faculty of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in 2008, has been honored as a pioneer on the list for his work in nanotechnology and materials. “I am thrilled to receive this prestigious recognition. It gives me and my research team an extra boost of motivation to pursue innovative technologies for improving human healthcare,” said Zhang. The Zhang Research Group has developed a novel technology for cloaking nanoparticles in natural red blood cell membranes that can evade the body’s immune system. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/liangfang_zhang_makes_mit_technology_reviews_annual_innovators_under_35_lis.
HPC Conference Call for Participation
Call for Papers: ACM 6th Workshop on Many-Task Computing on Clouds, Grids, and Supercomputers (MTAGS) 2013 @ SC13
November 17, 2013 – Denver, Colorado
Submission Deadline Extended – September 15, 2013
The 6th workshop on Many-Task Computing on Grids and Supercomputers (MTAGS) will provide the scientific community a dedicated forum for presenting new research, development, and deployment efforts of large-scale many-task computing (MTC) applications on large scale clusters, Grids, Supercomputers, and Cloud Computing infrastructure. MTC, the theme of the workshop encompasses loosely coupled applications, which are generally composed of many tasks (both independent and dependent tasks) to achieve some larger application goal. This workshop will cover challenges that can hamper efficiency and utilization in running applications on large-scale systems, such as local resource manager scalability and granularity, efficient utilization of raw hardware, parallel file system contention and scalability, data management, I/O management, reliability at scale, and application scalability. We welcome paper submissions on all theoretical, simulations, and systems topics related to MTC, but we give special consideration to papers addressing petascale to exascale challenges. Papers will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings as part of the ACM digital library (pending approval). The workshop will be co-located with the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing 2013 Conference. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=wksp135.
First Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale - Call for Submissions
March 4-5, 2014 – Atlanta, Georg
Paper and Poster Submission Deadline – November 8, 2013
The first annual meeting of the ACM Conference on Learning at Scale is intended to promote scientific exchange of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the learning sciences and computer science. Inspired by the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the accompanying huge shift in thinking about education, this conference was created by ACM as a new scholarly venue and key focal point for the review and presentation of the highest quality research on how learning and teaching can change and improve when done at scale. For more information, please visit http://learningatscale.acm.org/.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
2013 SACNAS National Conference
October 3–6, 2013 - San Antonio, Texas
SACNAS is a way for you to expose your students to incredible resources and the validating and inspiring environment of SACNAS where they have the unique opportunity to engage with science, culture, and community. The SACNAS National Conference also provides an important place for you to recharge as a professional, as you connect with peers, build your own networks, and recruit new students. For complete conference information, please visit http://sacnas.org/events/national-conf?.
SC13
November 17 - 22, 2013 - Denver, Colorado
SC13, the premier annual international conference on high-performance computing, networking, and storage, will be held in Denver, Colorado. The Technical Papers Program at SC is the leading venue for presenting the highest-quality original research, from the foundations of HPC to its emerging frontiers. The conference committee solicits submissions of excellent scientific merit that introduce new ideas to the field and stimulate future trends on topics such as applications, systems, parallel algorithms, and performance modeling. For more information, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/papers.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
TACC Has Deployed 20 Petabyte Global File System to Support Data Driven Science
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin has expanded its ecosystem of hardware resources to further support data driven science. In September, the center will deploy a DataDirect Networks (DDN) high-performance, scalable global file system (GFS) that will be accessible to all of TACC's computing and visualization systems and easily expandable in the coming years. Data driven science is emerging alongside modeling and simulation as another important computational methodology that uses high-end computing and storage systems. In this mode, vast amounts of digital data, collected by digital instruments such as gene sequencers, electron microscopes, satellite-based imagers and distributed sensor networks, can be mined for scientific insights. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2013/20-petabyte-global-file-system.
Reimagining the Labs? House Hearing Looks at Recommendations
Are the National Labs going in for an overhaul? In this video, the House Energy Subcommittee holds a hearing to examine the Department of Energy’s oversight and management of science and technology activities as they relate to enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the National Laboratory System. The hearing considered ideas and recommendations from three diverse think tanks on how laboratory authorities and management practices could be reformed to better address rapidly changing scientific and technological challenges. In this video, the House Energy Subcommittee holds a hearing to examine the Department of Energy’s oversight and management of science and technology activities as they relate to enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the National Laboratory System. To view the video and read further, please visit http://insidehpc.com/2013/07/14/reimagining-the-labs-house-hearing-looks-at-recommendations/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_257913840#!.
Rice University Develops Silicon Oxide Memories That Transcend a Hurdle
Rice University researchers have developed a one-kilobit rewritable silicon oxide device with diodes that eliminate data-corrupting crosstalk. The researchers say the chip demonstrates that it should be possible to go beyond the limitations of flash memory in packing density, energy consumption per bit, and switching speed. The crossbar memories are flexible, resist heat and radiation, and could be used for stacking in three-dimensional arrays. The diodes eliminate crosstalk by keeping the electronic state on a cell from leaking into adjacent cells. "It wasn't easy to develop, but it's now very easy to make," says Rice University professor James Tour. The device sandwiches the active silicon oxide between layers of palladium. The combined layers rest upon a thin layer of aluminum that combines with a base layer of p-doped silicon to act as a diode. To read further, please visit http://news.rice.edu/2013/07/09/silicon-oxide-memories-transcend-a-hurdle/.
Caltech is Predicting Earthquakes and Saving Lives--With Smartphones
BBC News
California Institute of Technology researchers have created an app called CrowdShake that provides early earthquake warnings by converting a smartphone's accelerometer into a seismometer. "In the Pasadena area, which is a relatively small community--it's hardly 10km across--we have hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that we give a very small low-cost accelerometer to, it's actually a seismometer," says Richard Guy, who manages Caltech's Community Seismic Network. The seismometers plug into a PC or router, and pick up vibrations caused by tremors. However, the device's cost and the failure of some volunteers to install the software presented obstacles, so the group sought an application that required no hardware to purchase or maintain. "The accelerometer is already in the phone, the location is something the phone knows, it's not something that a person has to tell it," Guy notes. "And of course your smartphone knows exactly what time it is." To read further, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23204346.
Educator Opportunities and Information
Have a Blast Learning About the Moon With Award-Winning Selene Video Game
Use your computer to journey back 4.5 billion years, and prepare to blast away -- you're going to make a moon just like Earth's. Start your students on this journey of scientific discovery with the award-winning “Selene” video game and its standards-based earth and space science. Designed for players ages 9 and older, "Selene: A Lunar Construction Game," teaches users about basic geological processes on Earth and in the solar system. Players fire away at what will quickly become a full-fledged, pockmarked moon like our own. Educators and youth leaders can incorporate "Selene" into classroom curriculum and other activities. Follow game play with "MoonGazers," hands-on activities that take players outside to explore the moon and its phases from their own backyards.
"Science" magazine and the National Science Foundation honored "Selene" in 2013 as one of the top educational games or apps in the world. To learn more about "Selene," read testimonials about it, or see how it aligns with national and state science standards, please visit http://selene.cet.edu.
"Selene" is now available in Spanish. For more info, please visit http://selene.cet.edu/?page=espanol.
Canadian Computing Competition
Registration Deadline – February 11, 2014
The Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) aims to benefit secondary school students with an interest in programming. It is an opportunity for students to test their ability in designing, understanding and implementing algorithms. It is also used to determine participation in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). For complete contest information and to register your school, please visit http://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/computing.html.
Join the American Computer Science League
The American Computer Science League is an international contest that has exposed students to important computer science concepts by having them solve short problems using pencil and paper AND creative programming problems using a language of their choice. For the past 35 years teachers have used ACSL materials as a classroom or club activity to increase the computer science experience of all their students since ACSL adapts to all levels of student expertise. Students from grades 5 through 12 can compete. There are four contests during the year that are administered at your school. Each contest presents 2 or 3 topics in computer science followed by a short-problem test consisting of 5 questions. Students then have 72 hours to complete a program to solve a creative problem. Although all your students take the tests, the team score is the sum of the best 3 or 5 scores each contest. Results are posted to the ACSL web site. Prizes are awarded on a regional basis to top scoring students and teams based upon cumulative scores. The ACSL registration form can be found at www.acsl.org. If you would like suggestions about what division(s) to join or how to participate, contact Jerry Tebrow at info@acsl.org.
Student Engagement and Information
US Department of Energy Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI)
Application Deadline – October 1, 2013 (for Spring 2014)
The Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program encourages undergraduate students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers by providing research experiences at the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories. Selected students participate as interns appointed at one of 15 participating DOE laboratories. They perform research, under the guidance of laboratory staff scientists or engineers, on projects supporting the DOE mission. For more information and to apply, please visit http://science.energy.gov/wdts/suli/.
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Seeking Undergraduate and Graduate Student Interns for Spring 2014
Application Deadline – October 4, 2013
he Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently accepting applications for its Spring 2014 Internship Program. Students who are U.S. citizens and who will be actively enrolled during the Spring 2014 semester are welcome to apply. More information and application instructions are available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/about/student/.
Tapia Conference Travel Scholarships Deadline Approaching
Submission Deadline – September 12, 2013
Scholarship Decisions Announced - October 11, 2013
The Tapia Conference provides scholarships for students (undergraduate/graduate), post-docs and a limited number for faculty. Scholarships include conference registration, meals during the conference, hotel accommodations, and a reimbursable travel stipend. Tapia scholarships are generously funded by government and industry organizations. For more information and to apply, please visit http://tapiaconference.org/participate/scholarships/.
| |
| The SIAM Fellows Program Now Accepting Applications
Application Deadline – November 4, 2013 The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is currently accepting nominations for the 2014 Class of SIAM Fellows. To nominate a candidate, you must be a current non-student member of SIAM. You may nominate up to two individuals for fellowship in a given year. Goals of the - To honor SIAM members who are recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the discipline.
- To help make outstanding SIAM members more competitive for awards and honors when they are being compared with colleagues from other disciplines.
- To support the advancement of SIAM members to leadership positions in their own institutions and in the broader society.
|
For more information, please visit http://nominatefellows.siam.org/Pages/Home.aspx.
On the Lighter Side - Computational News of Interest
What Will Watson Do with a Power8 Brain?
IBM's Watson impressed people all over the world in 2011 when the machine beat all contenders in a game of Jeopardy! Since then, IBM has kept the Power7-based technology busy, with gigs in financial analysis, healthcare, and customer service, among others. But now that IBM is gearing up to ship its Power8 processors, we could see a newer and more powerful Watson emerge. BM unveiled details of the forthcoming Power8 processor this week at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University. The 12-core, 4Ghz Power8 chip can execute 96 threads simultaneously, and is expected to be 2x to 3x more powerful than IBM's Power7 chip, which was used in the Watson supercomputer that competed on the game show. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-08-27/what_will_watson_do_with_a_power8_brain.html.
Move Over, Linpack: Supercomputers Get New Performance Test
IDG News Service
The Linpack test, which was developed in the 1970s and has been the basis for the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers for the past 20 years, is no longer the most useful benchmark for how well a system can perform, says Linpack creator and University of Tennessee professor Jack Dongarra. He says a new metric, called High Performance Conjugate Gradient (HPCG), could change the way vendors design supercomputers and provide customers with a better measure of the performance they can expect from real-world applications. Dongarra says HPCG is needed because computer vendors optimize their systems to rank highly on the Top500 list, but if that list is based on an out-of-date test, it encourages vendors to develop systems that are not optimal for today's applications. To read further, please visit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240708/Move_over_Linpack_Supercomputers_get_new_performance_test.
Software to Construct Everything With Legos
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
Romain Testuz, a graduate student in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne's Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Geometrics has developed an algorithm that automatically translates a three-dimensional (3D) representation into Lego pieces. Testuz's software takes 3D images and converts them into a detailed level-by-level plan of how to build the design using Legos. The algorithm starts with the smallest bricks and works up to the largest bricks, and if the bricks do not fit, the model will not work. Testuz and his supervisor, Yuliy Schwartzburg, use graph theory to address structural weaknesses, depicting each piece by a top and each connection by an edge to automatically pinpoint weak spots in the structure. In addition, the software offers construction solutions based on available materials. "The first challenge was to find research that had been conducted on this subject and to understand what wasn't working in pursuit of a better solution," Testuz says. He notes the software also enables users to choose the color of the model or any part of it. To read further, please visit http://actu.epfl.ch/news/software-to-construct-everything-with-legos/.
