Changes to the archive in in October 1996

Newest entries are first. Older changes can be found here.

31st October 1996

/parallel/events/hpcapps-gwich: High Performance Computing And Applications by LAI, Choi-Hong <C.H.Lai@greenwich.ac.uk> Call for papers for coruse being held from 13th-17th January 1997 at University of Greenwich, UK. This is an intensive 5-day course targeted at equipping participants with the experience and skills needed to build and exploit engineering / commercial software on leading edge parallel high performance computing technology in the solution of practical problems. See also http://www.greenwich.ac.uk/research/cms/parallel/hpca.html
/parallel/events/naecon97: IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON '97) by Pan Yi <pan@cis.ksu.edu> Call for papers for conference being held from 14th-18th July 1997 at Dayton, Ohio, USA. Sponsored by IEEE. Topics: Parallel and Distributed Architectures; Parallel and Distributed Algorithms; High-Performance Scientific Computing; Software Systems/Environments/Tools; Fault Tolerance and Reliability Prediction; Load Sharing and Task Scheduling; Resource Allocation and Management; Network Routing and Communication Algorithms; Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing; Modeling and Simulation; Signal and Image Processing; Performance Monitoring and Visualization; Application Studies; Neural Networks and others. Deadlines: Abstracts: 16th December 1996; Complete Papers: 3rd February 1997; Notification: 15th March 1997; Camera-ready papers: 15th April 1997. See also http://www.erinet.com/dayieee/NAECON/Welcome.html
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/: Release of Kent Retargetable occam Compiler (KROC) 0.8beta
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/README.html: KROC 0.8 Beta Release Announcement (from release)
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/INSTALL.html: KROC 0.8 Beta Installation and Use (from release)
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/NEWS.html: KROC 0.8 Beta Release History (from release)
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/TARGETS.html: KROC Processor Targeting Information (from release)
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-sparc-sun-sunos4.1.3_U1.tar.gz
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-sparc-sun-sunos4.1.3_U1.tar.Z: KROC 0.8 beta BINARY distribution for Sun Sparcs with SunOS 4.1.3U1 by Occam For All Group <ofa-bugs@ukc.ac.uk> Compiles the occam 2.1 language (RECORDS and DATA TYPEs) has an occam/C interface tool and has separate compilation support (#USE). Includes standard libraries (hostio.lib, streamio.lib etc.), language documentation, examples and exercises.
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-sparc-sun-solaris2.5.tar.gz
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-sparc-sun-solaris2.5.tar.Z: KROC 0.8 beta BINARY distribution for Sun Sparcs with Solaris 2.5 (SunOS 5.5) by Occam For All Group <ofa-bugs@ukc.ac.uk> Compiles the occam 2.1 language (RECORDS and DATA TYPEs) has an occam/C interface tool and has separate compilation support (#USE). Includes standard libraries (hostio.lib, streamio.lib etc.), language documentation, examples and exercises.
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-alpha-dec-osf3.0.tar.gz
/parallel/occam/projects/occam-for-all/kroc/kroc-0.8beta-alpha-dec-osf3.0.tar.Z: KROC 0.8 beta BINARY distribution for DEC Alphas with OSF 3.0 by Occam For All Group <ofa-bugs@ukc.ac.uk> Compiles the occam 2.1 language (RECORDS and DATA TYPEs) has an occam/C interface tool and the first release of Alpha separate compilation support. Includes standard libraries (hostio.lib, streamio.lib etc.), language documentation, examples and exercises.
/parallel/events/: Added new event:

28th October 1996

/parallel/architecture/communications/io/pario/STARFISH/starfish3.0.tar.gz: STARFISH Parallel file-system simulator V3.0 by David Kotz <dfk@cs.dartmouth.edu>, http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, 6211 Sudikoff Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755-3510 USA; Tel: +1 603-646-1439 Source code for parallel file-system simulator and associated stuff.
/parallel/architecture/communications/io/pario/papers/Kotz/rus:autonomous.ps.Z: Autonomous and Adaptive Agents that Gather Information by Daniela Rus; Robert Gray and David Kotz <dfk@cs.dartmouth.edu>. In AAAI'96 International Workshop on Intelligent Adaptive Agents, August 1996. ABSTRACT: We have designed and implemented autonomous software agents. Autonomous software agents navigate independently through a heterogeneous network of computers. They can sense the state of the network, monitor software conditions, and interact with other agents. The network-sensing tools allow our agents to adapt to the network configuration and to navigate under the control of reactive plans. In this paper we illustrate the intelligent and adaptive behavior of autonomous agents in distributed information-gathering tasks.
/parallel/events/: Added new event:

21st October 1996

/parallel/occam/compilers/ocpp/: Updated OCPP: an occam pre-processor
/parallel/occam/compilers/ocpp/ocpp300.tar.gz: occam Pre-Processor V3.00 binaries (OCPP) by Mark Ian Barlow <Mark@nlcc.demon.co.uk>; Tel: +44 (0)1207 562 154
/parallel/occam/compilers/ocpp/srci100.tar.gz: occam Pre-Processor V3.00 sources (OCPP) by Mark Ian Barlow <Mark@nlcc.demon.co.uk>; Tel: +44 (0)1207 562 154

17th October 1996

/parallel/vendors/intel/paragon/software/nxlib/NXLibV1_1_4+LINUX.tar.gz: NXlib V1.1.4 distribution for Linux Includes some bugfixes and a workaround for Linux

16th October 1996

/parallel/info/stats/: Graphs of access statistics as GIF and PNG images for IPCA since start of archive and for just 1996.
/parallel/libraries/memory/global-array/: Updated GA Toolkit to V2.2. Global Arrays is a portable shared Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) programming environment for distributed and shared memory computers.
/parallel/libraries/memory/global-array/global2.2.tar.Z: Global Array (GA) Toolkit V2.2 by Jarek Nieplocha <j_nieplocha@pnl.gov>, Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, MSIN: K1-87, Richland, WA 99352, USA; Tel: +1 (509) 372-4469 Requires GNU make, IPC (semaphores).
/parallel/architecture/communications/io/pario/papers/Kotz/kotz:jdiskdir.Jan95.ps.Z: Disk-directed I/O for MIMD Multiprocessors by David Kotz <dfk@cs.dartmouth.edu>, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA Submitted to TOCS January 15, 1995 ABSTRACT: Many scientific applications that run on today's multiprocessors, such as weather forecasting and seismic analysis, are bottlenecked by their file-I/O needs. Even if the multiprocessor is configured with sufficient I/O hardware, the file-system software often fails to provide the available bandwidth to the application. Although libraries and enhanced file-system interfaces can make a significant improvement, we believe that fundamental changes are needed in the file-server software. We propose a new technique, disk-directed I/O, to allow the disk servers to determine the flow of data for maximum performance. Our simulations show that tremendous performance gains are possible both for simple reads and writes and for an out-of-core application. Indeed, disk-directed I/O provided consistent high performance that was largely independent of data distribution, obtained up to 93% of peak disk bandwidth, and was as much as 18 times faster than traditional parallel file systems.

14th October 1996

/parallel/simulation/communications/chaos/docs/: Updated descriptions of:
/parallel/simulation/communications/chaos/docs/byost.ps.Z: Cost Effective Fault Tolerance for Network Routing by William Yost, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA Master of Science Thesis ABSTRACT: As the size of interconnection networks for multicomputers increases, it becomes clear that some degree of fault tolerance will be required in order to maintain system reliability at an acceptable level. The interconnection networks contain large numbers of relatively unreliable components. However, cost and performance concerns mandate that the addition of fault tolerance to the network have an unobtrusive impact on network design. The target design space requires reasonable reliability while avoiding exorbitant additional costs. Because routing messages around failed components may require non-minimal routes, it makes sense to examine routers which, by design, allow packets to take non-minimal routes. However, to provide for effective and efficient fault tolerance, a unified, coherent scheme, is augmented with a limited amount of hardware to support fault detection, identification, and reconfiguration so that the network can maintain reliable operation in the presence of faults. The Express Broadcast Network is introduced; a low overhead control of the network, and specifically, provides for global control and synchronization of fault management procedures for Chaos. A high-level design is presented in which fault tolerance is greatly enhanced by the addition of functionality to targeted blocks while maintaining the structure of Chaotic routing and avoiding large incremental costs.
/parallel/simulation/communications/chaos/docs/guide.ps.Z: A Guide to Literature on Chaotic Routing by Chaotic Routing Project, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
/parallel/environments/pvm3/distribution/pvm_win32.tar.gz
/parallel/environments/pvm3/distribution/pvm_win32.zip: Updated: "PVM 3.3.? for Win32" PVM 3.3.? for MS Windows 32-bit (Windows 95, Windows NT). Contains executables, documetnation, examples, source code, manual pages and support software.
/parallel/events/ipps97-hips97: 2nd Workshop onHigh-Level Programming Models and Supportive Environments (HIPS'97) by Rudi Hackenberg <hackenbe@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> Call for papers for IPPS97 workshop being held from 1st-5th April 1997 at Geneva, Switzerland. Topics: Concepts and languages for high-level parallel programming; Concurrent object-oriented programming; Automatic parallelization and optimization; High-level programming environments; Performance analysis techniques and tools; Implementation techniques for high-level programming models; Distributed shared memory; Architectural support for high-level programming models and others. Deadlines: Manuscripts: 15th November 1996; Notification: 31st December 1996; Camera ready papers: 31st January 1997. See also http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~ipps97 (for IPPS97)
/parallel/events/ipps97-rtspp: Workshop on Runtime Systems for Parallel Programming at IPPS'97 (RTSPP) by Gregory D. Benson <benson@cs.ucdavis.edu> Call for papers for IPPS97 workshop being held on 5th April 1997 at Geneva, Switzerland. Topics: Techniques to reduce the tension between portability and efficiency in runtime systems; Relationship between runtime systems and programming models; Interfaces between compiler-generated code and runtime systems; Operating system support for runtime systems; Performance evaluation of runtime systems; The design and implementation of runtime systems for high-speed networks; The design and implementation of thread systems; Runtime systems for distributed shared memory; Extensibility and adaptability in runtime systems and others. Deadlines: Manuscripts: 6th December 1996; Notification: 10th January 1997; Camera ready papers: 3rd February 1997. See also http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~ipps97 (for IPPS97)
/parallel/events/hpf-ug: 1st High Performance Fortran (HPF) User Group Meeting by Israel Gale <gale@wind.hpc.pko.dec.com> Call for speakers and participation in meeting being held from 24th-26th February 1997 at Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA. Includes intro to HPF, HPF 2.0, invited talks by HPF users and developers, panel discussions, contributed talks, real HPF applications, software and development. Deadlines: Abstract: 2nd January 1997; Speaker Notification: 16th January 1997; (Early) Registration: 24th January 1997.
/parallel/job-digital-us: Digital Equipment parallel computing engineers. by Mark Gantly <mark@ilo.dec.com> Projects include distributed parallel runtime environments (supporting PVM, MPI and Fortran90/HPF), parallel tools (for debugging and performance profiling) and high performance I/O. Requirements: CS or equiv., UNIX & C experience.

7th October 1996

/parallel/events/wscg97: Fifth International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics and Visualization 1997 (WSCG'97) by skala <skala@kiv.zcu.cz> Call for papers and participation for conference being held from 10th-14th February 1997 at University of West Bohemia, nr Prague, Czech Republic. Topics: Fundamental algorithms, rendering and visualization, virtual reality, animation and multimedia, medical imaging, geometric modelling and fractals, graphical interaction, object-oriented graphics, standards, computer vision, parallel and distributed graphics, computational geometry, computer aided geometric design, CAD/CAM, DTP and GIS systems, educational aspects of related fields, usage of graphics within mathematical software in education.and others. Deadlines: Papers: 30th October 1996; Notification: 10th December 1996. See also http://yoyo.zcu.cz/~skala/wscg97.html, http://yoyo1.zcu.cz/~skala/wscg97.html (maybe faster) or herakles.zcu.cz
/parallel/events/mdt-mpp: Molecular Dynamics Techniques on MPP Platforms by J-C Desplat <desplat@epcc.edinburgh.ac.uk> Call for participation for seminar being held on 25th December 1996 at Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, UK. This multi-disciplinary seminar will deal with the application of Molecular Dynamics methods to a wide variety of scientific areas from materials structure to cosmology, but focused on implementations on massively parallel machines. With presentations by leading researchers from the US, Europe and the UK, this seminar will be of interest to computational scientists and engineers in any discipline using (or intending to use) MD techniques on MPP machines. See also http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/t3d/hpci/md_seminar.html
/parallel/events/europar97: EURO-PAR'97 by Sergei Gorlatch <gorlatch@fmi.uni-passau.de> Call for papers for conference being held from 26th-29th August 1997 at Passu, Germany. Topics: Parallel Computing (in Europe :-) ? ). Deadlines: Papers: 1st February 1997; Notification: 2nd May 1997; Final papers: 10th June 1997; Early Registration: 30th June 1997. See also http://www.uni-passau.de/europar97/ for updates and plans.
/parallel/events/ipps97-job-scheduling: 3rd Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing at IPPS'97 by Dror Feitelson <feit@humus.cs.huji.ac.il> Call for papers for IPPS97 workshop being held on 5th April 1997 at Geneva, Switzerland. Topics: Experience with scheduling policies on current systems; Performance implications of scheduling strategies; Fairness, priorities, and accounting issues; Workload characterization and classification; Support for different classes of jobs (e.g. interactive vs. batch); Static vs. dynamic partitioning; Time slicing and gang scheduling; Interaction of Scheduling with the model of computation; Interaction of scheduling with memory management and I/O; Load estimation and load balancing; Scheduling on heterogeneous nodes (e.g. with different amounts of memory); Performance metrics to compare scheduling schemes and others. Deadlines: Paper: 27th December 1996; Notification: 7th February 1997; Final paper: 7th March 1997. See also http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~ipps97 (for IPPS97)
/parallel/events/ipps97-rand-par: 2nd Workshop on Randomized Parallel Computing at IPPS'97 by Michael A. Palis <palis@crab.rutgers.edu> Call for papers for IPPS97 workshop being held on 5th April 1997 at Geneva, Switzerland. Topics: Network Algorithms; PRAM Algorithms; Architectures; I/O Systems; Scheduling; Network Fault Tolerance; Reconfigurable Networks; Optical Networks; Various Applications; Programming models and languages; Implementation Experience and others. Deadlines: Papers: 1st December 1996; Notification: 1st February 1997; Camer ready manuscripts: 5th March 1997. See also http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~ipps97 (for IPPS97)
/parallel/events/spdp96-challenges: Challenges in Compiling for Scalable Parallel Systems workshop at SPDP'96 by Santosh Pande <santosh@ececs.uc.edu> Call for participation and advance program for workshop being held at 8th IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing (SPDP '96) on 24th October 1996 at New Orleans, LA, USA.

7th October 1996

/parallel/occam/utilities/odt/: The occam Design Tool (ODT) is an interactive graphical environment for the specification and partial implementation of concurrent systems and enables structured design of parallel systems through hierarchies of communicating process networks. ODT has knowledge of various paradigms for process synchronisation -- whose correct application secures guarantees of freedom from deadlock, livelock and starvation -- and enforces that correct application by the designer. The tool also generates program skeletons that handle the parallel and communication aspects of the system implementation. The target programming language has to be one whose formal semantics respect the mathematical model (CSP) under which the design rules were able to be proven -- currently, this is occam. By targeting occam, we derive the further benefit of eliminating unguarded race hazards.
/parallel/occam/utilities/odt/odt-1.02.tar.gz: ODT 1.02 (source only) by Dave Beckett <D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk> Requires Tcl/Tk 7.5/4.1 (or better)
/parallel/occam/utilities/odt/odt-1.02-osf.tar.gz: ODT 1.02 with DEC Alpha OSF binaries of wish4.1 by Dave Beckett <D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk>
/parallel/occam/utilities/odt/odt-1.02-sunos.tar.gz: ODT 1.02 with Sun Sparc SunOS 4.1.3U1 binaries of wish4.1 by Dave Beckett <D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk>

4th October 1996

/parallel/acronyms/hpccgloss/: Updated HPCC Glossary to have Ken Hawick's new email address.
/parallel/libraries/communication/scotch/scotch_3.1.2A.tar.gz: The SCOTCH v3.1.2 Academic distribution by Francois Pellegrini <pelegrin@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> Contains binaries for Sun Solaris 2 and SunOS 4; MIPS SGI IRIX 5 and 6; Linux; PowerPC IBM AIX 4. Also contains sources, graphs and 3.1.2 User Guide.
/parallel/standards/mpi/anl/: Added HTML versions of the MPICH documentation:
/parallel/standards/mpi/anl/mpiuserguide.html.tar.gz: Users' Guide to mpich, a Portable Implementation of MPI by William Gropp <gropp@mcs.anl.gov> and Ewing Lusk <lusk@mcs.anl.gov>. Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, USA.
/parallel/standards/mpi/anl/mpiinstall.html.tar.gz: Installation Guide to mpich, a Portable Implementation of MPI by William Gropp <gropp@mcs.anl.gov> and Ewing Lusk <lusk@mcs.anl.gov>. Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, USA.
/parallel/architecture/communications/io/pario/papers/Kotz/nieuwejaar:jgalley.ps.Z: The Galley Parallel File System by Nils Nieuwejaar <nils@cs.dartmouth.edu> and David Kotz <dfk@cs.dartmouth.edu>. Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3510, USA. To appear in Parallel Computing, 1996. ABSTRACT: Most current multiprocessor file systems are designed to use multiple disks in parallel, using the high aggregate bandwidth to meet the growing I/O requirements of parallel scientific applications. Many multiprocessor file systems provide applications with a conventional Unix-like interface, allowing the application to access multiple disks transparently. This interface conceals the parallelism within the file system, increasing the ease of programmability, but making it difficult or impossible for sophisticated programmers and libraries to use knowledge about their I/O needs to exploit that parallelism. In addition to providing an insufficient interface, most current multiprocessor file systems are optimized for a different workload than they are being asked to support. We introduce Galley, a new parallel file system that is intended to efficiently support realistic scientific multiprocessor workloads. We discuss Galley's file structure and application interface, as well as the performance advantages offered by that interface.
/parallel/architecture/communications/io/pario/papers/Kotz/kotz:flexibility2.ps.Z: Flexibility and Performance of Parallel File Systems by David Kotz <dfk@cs.dartmouth.edu> and Nils Nieuwejaar <nils@cs.dartmouth.edu>. Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3510, USA. Copyright 1996 by Springer-Verlag. Appeared in the Third International Conference of the Austrian Center for Parallel Computation (ACPC), which was published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. ABSTRACT: As we gain experience with parallel file systems, it becomes increasingly clear that a single solution does not suit all applications. For example, it appears to be impossible to find a single appropriate interface, caching policy, file structure, or disk-management strategy. Furthermore, the proliferation of file-system interfaces and abstractions make applications difficult to port. We propose that the traditional functionality of parallel file systems be separated into two components: a fixed core that is standard on all platforms, encapsulating only primitive abstractions and interfaces, and a set of high-level libraries to provide a variety of abstractions and applicationprogrammer interfaces (APIs). We present our current and next-generation file systems as examples of this structure. Their features, such as a three-dimensional file structure, strided read and write interfaces, and I/O-node programs, are specifically designed with the flexibility and performance necessary to support a wide range of applications.

2nd October 1996

/parallel/events/hpcn-europe97: Updated: "High-Performance Computing and Networking, Europe 1997" (HPCN Europe 97) by Jaap Hollenberg <sondjaap@horus.sara.nl> Call for papers, posters and workshops and submission rules for conference being held from 28-30th April 1997 at Vienna, Austria. Topics: End-user HPCN applications, computational science and computer science research in HPCN. Deadlines: Extended Abstracts / Full Papers: 8th November 1996; Posters: 8th November 1996; Workshops: 8th November 1996; Notification: 1st February 1997. See also http://www.wins.uva.nl/research/HPCN97/
/parallel/events/hpcasia97: Changed dates and location of HPC Asia'97 to April 28-May 2 1997 and now at Seoul Hilton.
/parallel/occam/documentation/books: Added details of "occam2" by John Galletly <john@buck.ac.uk> (1996, UCL Press)