Summer Institute on Advanced Computation August 20-23, 2000 College of Engineering & CS Wright State University Dayton, Ohio 45435-0001

Summer Institute on Advanced Computation Aug 21, 2000   This site contains the "web-based proceedings" of Summer Institute on Advanced Computation that focused on high- performance high-throughput  Cluster Computing.

Welcome by Dr. James Brandeberry
Dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science
Wright State University

DR. JAMES BRANDEBERRY: We're delighted to host this advanced computing workshop. It seems like these days people's desire for computing power never ceases. I remember when I was chair of the computer science department probably twenty years ago now, or approaching that, maybe more than that. Anyhow, in that era, the computing power we had was such that any PC today we would have killed for. We never would have believed you could use the kind of computing power that people seem to have a desire for today. So the topic on networking is very appropriate because that is the one way we have of continuing to increase the power even beyond what the individual machines are cable of.  We have a very strong focus on computing here. In fact, the college's name is the College of Engineering and Computer Science, to, I think, place proper emphasis on the importance of computing. We viewed computing as part of engineering back before most other institutions felt that way. We had a computer engineering program back in the seventies. We created a department of computer science and computer engineering long before most other schools recognized that that was an important discipline. We had our computer engineering program up for accreditation, about the first that ABET did that, and it was bit of a problem there because they weren't sure what the rules were. We had tried twice, but the second try was a year after the first try, and we got it, so I think we did something right. So we're delighted to have you all here and hope that this workshop provides you with some new insights. Welcome.  Oscar.

Introduction to the Conference Objectives and Sponsors
Dr Oscar N. Garcia
NCR Distinguished Professor and Chair
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Wright State University

DR. OSCAR GARCIA: Well, I am supposedly organizing this summer institute, which many of you know, is second in a series. I think it is important to notice that there are a number of people and institutions behind the scenes who are actually the real organizers and the funders and sponsors. In particular, I want to acknowledge the funding from the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and actually they pretty much transmitted a grant from Sun Microsystems, which enabled this summer institute. And we have a luncheon speaker today from Sun Microsystems, and make sure that we say thank you. The speaker may not know that Sun funded it, but they did. In addition to that, the Information Technology Research Institute and the College of Engineering, and Wright State University in general. So we're very grateful to them, and I hope that you will find this information provided here very useful to you.

One of the major driving forces for the summer institute is the Supercomputer Users Group or SUG of the Ohio Supercomputer Center. And we usually run a survey in which we try to find out the most significant topics. And this year, of course, the most interesting topic to a large number of people was networks of workstations. And I will introduce later the local speaker from Wright State University, who is going to be sort of the lead and organizer of the technical portions of the program. But right now I have to tell you that the real working person in this situation has been my assistant chair, Jay DeJongh, and he's going to, in his usual matter of fact way, is going to tell you about the folders that you have and run through some of the administrative details.

DR. JAY DEJONGH: You can obviously see what is in the folders, but the things that are important are the salmon colored sheets which are the feedback questionnaires. We'll have a box out on the table outside the room which you can put these in whenever you are leaving, and we'd appreciate it if you would fill these out because we need the feedback to see what we are doing right and wrong and could do better next year. The schedule is, of course, the green sheet. I want to point out one change. The morning sessions each morning from 8:30 to 10:15 with Dr. Mateti is listed as room 429. Both sessions are going to be in this room, 145 and the rest of the room we'll be upstairs, but Dr. Mateti will lead you through that. The lunch and the dinner today are going to be in the same room we had dinner last night E156 in the Student Union. And I think that's about all I wanted to say. I guess there was a problem today. Breakfast and lunch Tuesday and Wednesday will be in the Student Union Cafeteria, which is on the other end of the Student Union Building. The problem they had today is all taken care of so, so there will be no more of an issue there.

DR. OSCAR GARCIA: Thank you very much, Jay. ...

The rest of the morning session is retrievable below.