The 3rd International Conference on Metaheuristics and Nature Inspired Computing, META’10, features a special session on Metaheuristics on graphics hardware, organized by Geir Hasle and Trond Runar Hagen. It focuses on the utilization of modern commodity computer architectures, in particular Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), to enhance the performance of metaheuristics. A broad spectrum of papers is invited, ranging from case studies focused on specific problems and applications to theoretical aspects and frameworks.

The conference will take place October 28-30, 2010, on Djerba Island, Tunisia. More information is available at the conference web page.

This symposium is organized by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Simulation & Modeling and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. The program includes a half-day hands-on tutorial, and several invited talks and presentations by experts from academia and industry. Registration is required. More information can be found at the symposium website.

The International Workshop on Parallel and Symbolic Computation (PASCO) is a series of workshops dedicated to the promotion and advancement of parallel algorithms and software in all areas of symbolic mathematical computation. The pervasive ubiquity of parallel architectures and memory hierarchy has led to the emergence of a new quest for parallel mathematical algorithms and software capable of exploiting the various levels of parallelism: from hardware acceleration technologies (multi-core and multi-processor system on chip, GPGPU, FPGA) to cluster and global computing platforms. To push up the limits of symbolic and algebraic computations, beyond the optimization of the application itself, the effective use of a large number of resources -memory and general or specialized computing units- is expected to enhance the performance multi-criteria objectives: time, energy consumption, resource usage, reliability. In this context, the design and the implementation of mathematical algorithms with provable and adaptive performances is a major challenge.

The workshop PASCO 2010 will be a three-day event including invited presentations and tutorials, contributed research papers and posters, and a programming contest. Specific topics include, but are not limited to: Read the rest of this entry »

The HiBi workshop establishes a forum to link researchers in the areas of parallel computing and computational systems biology. One of the main limitations in managing models of biological systems comes from the fundamental difference between the high parallelism evident in biochemical reactions and the sequential environments employed for the analysis of these reactions. Such limitations affect all varieties of continuous, deterministic, discrete and stochastic models; undermining the applicability of simulation techniques and analysis of biological models. The goal of HiBi is therefore to bring together researchers in the fields of high performance computing and computational systems biology. Experts from around the world will present their current work, discuss
profound challenges, new ideas, results, applications and their experience relating to key aspects of high performance computing in biology.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Parallel stochastic simulation
• Biological and Numerical parallel computing
• Parallel and distributed architectures
• Emerging processing architecture: Cell processors, GPUs, mixed CPU-FPGA, etc.
• Parallel model checking techniques
• Parallel parameter estimation
• Parallel algorithms for biological analysis
• Application of concurrency theory to biology
• Parallel visualization algorithms
• Web-services and Internet computing for e-Science
• Tools and applications

More Information: http://www.cosbi.eu/hibi2010/

The symposium will provide technical presentations from the companies advancing the development of GPUs, discussions of the challenges involved in effectively programming GPUs, and presentations on the use of GPUs in a range of chemical applications.

The deadline for submissions is 04/05/2010, and more information can be found at http://illinois.edu/lb/article/2101/33709.

High-Performance Graphics 2010 continues last year’s success at synthesizing two important and cutting-edge topics in computer graphics, the previous Graphics Hardware and Interactive Ray Tracing conferences. The scope of the conference is the overarching field of performance-oriented graphics systems, covering innovative algorithms, efficient implementations, and hardware architecture. This broader focus offers a common forum bringing together researchers, engineers, and architects to discuss the complex interactions of massively parallel hardware, novel programming models, efficient graphics algorithms, and innovative applications.

The program features three days of paper and industry presentations, with ample time for discussions during breaks, lunches, and the  conference banquet. The conference, which will take place on June 25-27, is co-located with Eurographics Rendering Symposium on the campus of the Max-Planck  Institut Informatik, Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany.

Original and innovative performance-oriented contributions are invited from all areas of graphics, including hardware architectures, rendering, physics, animation, AI, simulation, data structures, with topics including (but not limited to):

• New graphics hardware architectures
• Rendering architectures and algorithms
• Parallel computing for graphics (including GPU Computing)
• Algorithmic foundations
• Languages and compilation

The conference website with additional information is located at http://www.highperformancegraphics.org.

Molecular Workshop Series – Running and Developing MD Algorithms on GPUs with OpenMM and PyOpenMM + Intro to MD and Trajectory Analysis

Simbios is excited to announce its upcoming Molecular Dynamics (MD) Workshop Series, highlighting new capabilities within the recently released OpenMM 1.0 and introducing PyOpenMM for rapid MD code development with high performance:

Day 1: Running and Developing MD Algorithms on GPUs with OpenMM
Day 2: Introduction to MD and Trajectory Analysis with Markov State Models

When: March 1-2, 2010 (sign up for one or two days)
Where: Stanford University

Registration is free but required and spaces are limited. Please visit http://simbios.stanford.edu/MDWorkshops.htm for the workshop agenda and to register.

RIKEN, one of the most prestigious research institutes in Japan, is the site of an upcoming computing workshop to be keynoted by NVIDIA CEO Jen–Hsun Huang. RIKEN conducts research across a wide range of fields, including physics, chemistry, medical science, biology, and engineering. The workshop will be held 1/28/10 – 1/29/10. See https://reg-nvidia.jp/public/seminar/view/3 for full details.  In addition to keynote speeches by Jen-Hsun Huang and Professor Takayuki Aoki from Tokyo Institute of Technology, guest speakers at the event include Prof. Lorena Barba from Boston University, Mr. Mr. Eiji Fujii from Square ENIX, Dr. Mark Harris from NVIDIA (and GPGPU.org), and Dr. James Phillips from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From the workshop webpage:

“Accelerated Computing” is an old concept that is recently redefined in High-Performance Computing. It was started by dedicated machines like GRAPEs, but a great revolution has been occurring fueled by recent advancement in GPU Computing, both in hardware and in software such as CUDA C and OpenCL. This conference aims to review cutting edge technologies and scientific applications, as well as to discuss the future of the “Accelerator” approach in scientific and industrial HPC. Please join the conference for fruitful discussions on the future of HPC with highly-parallel processors.

This workshop will be held in conjunction with CIT 2010, Bradford, UK, 29 June – 01 July, 2010.  From the announcement:

We are undergoing a new revolution in parallel processor technologies, especially the Graphics Processing Units. GPUs have become widely used nowadays to accelerate a broad range of applications, including computational finance, numerical computing, image/video processing, engineering simulations, quantum chemistry, just to name a few.
The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and share their research and development experiences and outputs on the massively parallel GPU platforms, software development tools, optimization techniques, parallel algorithm design, and all kinds of successful applications. We solicit original and previously unpublished papers addressing research challenges and advances towards the design, implementation and evaluation of massively parallel GPU computing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Second USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism (HotPar ‘10)
June 14-15, Berkeley, CA

Website: http://www.usenix.org/event/hotpar10/

Following the tremendous success of HotPar ‘09, the Second USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism (HotPar ‘10) will once again bring together researchers and practitioners doing innovative work in the area of parallel computing. Multicore processors are the pervasive computing platform of the future. This trend is driven by limits on energy consumption in computer systems and the poor energy performance of conventional microprocessors. Parallel architectures can potentially mitigate these problems, but this new computer architecture will only be successful if languages, systems, and applications can take advantage of parallel hardware. Navigating this change will require new concurrency-friendly programming paradigms, new methods of application design, new structures for system software, and new models of interaction between applications, compilers, operating systems, and hardware.

Submissions

We request submissions of position papers that propose new directions for research of products in these areas, advocate non-traditional approaches to the problems engendered by parallelism, or potentially generate controversy and discussion. We encourage submissions from practitioners as well as from researchers. Read the rest of this entry »