Oct. 11, 2004

"System X: Building the Virginia Tech Supercomputer", 

 Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, Director Terascale Computing Facility 
 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 
 Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 Email: srinidhi@cs.vt.edu.

System X was conceived in March 2003, designed in July 2003 and by October it had achieved a sustained performance of 10.28 Teraflops, making it the third fastest supercomputer in the world today. System X has several novel features. First, it is based on an Apple G5 platform with the new IBM PowerPC 970 64-bit CPUs. Secondly, it uses a high performance switched communications fabric called Infiniband. Finally, System X is cooled by a hybrid liquid-air cooling system. 

In this talk, we present the motivation for System X, its architecture, and the challenges faced in building, deploying and maintaining a large-scale supercomputer. (Visit www.tcf.vt.edu for more information)

BIOGRAPHY

Srinidhi Varadarajan received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 2000. He presently serves as the Director of the Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Tech and as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Varadarajan is the recipient of the ComputerWorld Honors Award in the Science Category 2004, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the Egg Factory Technology Innovation award and a Faculty Fellow award from the College of Engineering, Virginia Tech. 

Dr. Varadarajan’s research is focused on transparent fault tolerance for massively parallel supercomputers, scalable network emulation, compiler directed strategies for flexible data sharing models and routing algorithms for backbone IP networks. In the area of transparent fault tolerance his work concentrates on developing incremental checkpointing, recovery and migration algorithms. His research in network emulation is focused on building a distributed system that can scale to emulate hundreds of thousands of virtual nodes. This work involves research on several areas, including compiler directed mechanisms for transparent generation of reentrant code from non-reentrant sources, automatic 
checkpointing and recovery, code migration, dynamic load balancing and 3D environments for network traffic visualization. In the area of routing algorithms, he is exploring the use of AI techniques such as reinforced learning for use in a probabilistic framework for multi-path routing protocols. Dr. Varadarajan is the architect of System X, the third fastest supercomputer in the world located at the Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Tech. 

Oct. 12, 2004

"Impact of on-line Gaming on Networking"
Chekib Akrout, IBM, Vice President
PowerPC and Networking Technology Development

Willingness to customize microprocessors for specific applications has uniquely positioned IBM as the microprocessor supplier of choice to the games market. An identical approach of customizing microprocessors for Network Processing provides tremendous processing power and gives much more flexible Networking functions support compared to what is offered by classical Network Processors with Hardware co-processors.
Evolution of the Gaming industry is driving a need for microprocessors whose structure supports both Gaming and Networking functions with a very high level of programming flexibility with a consistent programming model, as well as the tremendous performance required by on-line Gaming on Networking. 

 “Status of Next Generation Cellular and Wireless Local Area Network Services and Current Research Activities”

Dr. Mohsen Guizani, IEEE/TCCC/Western Mich Univ   

With the rapidly growing demands for cellular/wireless communication systems, new types of user’s applications are emerging. These applications of mixed traffic of voice, data, and real time audio/video have challenged the current Third Generation service providers to respond with new generation of system specifications capable of providing increased data throughput. The next generation cellular/wireless communication systems need not only to provide a higher data throughput but also to support integrated applications with various Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Providing QoS control for the emerging Multimedia Wireless Generation (MWG) is a challenging task, due to the time varying and nonstationary wireless links. Being different from wired communication networks, providing QoS in the form of absolute guarantee may not be possible with current technologies.

In this talk, we will review the current status of cellular/wireless systems in the US and point out its deficiencies. We then will suggest some solutions based on our current research activities at Western Michigan University.

BIOGRAPHY 

Mohsen Guizani is currently a Professor and the Chair of the Computer Science Department at Western Michigan University. He received his B.S. (with distinction) and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering; M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering in 1984, 1986, 1987, and 1990, respectively, from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

His research interests include Computer Networks, Wireless Communications and Computing, and Optical Networking. He currently serves on the editorial boards of six technical Journals and the Founder and EIC of “Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing” Journal published by John Wiley (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1530-8669/). He is the author of four books and in the process of writing the fifth. He guest edited a number of special issues in Journals and Magazines including the Journal of Selected Areas in Communications and Communication Society Magazine. He also served as member, Chair, and General Chair of a number of conferences, including the General Chair of IEEE VTC. He has more than 130 publications in refereed journals and conferences.

Dr. Guizani received both the Best Teaching Award and the Excellence in Research Award from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1999. He won the best Research Award from KFUPM in 1995 (a university wide competition). He was selected as the Best Teaching Assistant for two consecutive years at Syracuse University, 1988 and 1989.

Oct. 13, 2004

"Self-Organization of Wireless Networks: The New Frontier"
  Dr. Sudhir Dixit, Nokia Fellow

The size of the internet will increase with the mainstream adoption of the broadband
mobility connecting a myriad of devices and sensors at homes and businesses and the 
use of IPv6. All this will add to the spatio-temporal complexity of the network 
topology and dynamics. We present a brief overview of the role that self-organization
can play in this new era of complexity. Issues of QoS, scalability, robustness, and
reachability, among others (e.g., heterogeneity) will continue to dominate the 
research in the future. First, we present the definition, scope, and applicability 
of self-organization. Then we briefly articulate the need for self-organization, and 
some recent breakthrough advances in this emerging area of research. This is followed
by some near- and long-term scenarios where self-organization can be applied, and 
some results that we have obtained. We conclude the talk with a discussion on the 
key challenges that lie ahead