Conference for Junior Researchers

Facing the Multicore-Challenge

 

Heidelberg Academy of Sciences


March 17-19, 2010

 



Conference theme
The prevalence of multicore technologies has brought ubiquitous parallelism and a huge theoretical potential for compute-intensive tasks. In theory, advancements in technology bring us closer to the solution of the Grand Challenges in modern computing. In practice however, it is hard to achieve maximal throughput in the results and to exploit all available capabilities. Due to the inevitable paradigm shift towards multicore technologies, parallelism is now affecting all kinds of software development processes – from large-scale numerical simulation to desktop commodity applications. And parallelism is no longer restricted to well-balanced systems built of homogeneous nodes. In recent systems parallelism spreads over many systems levels including nodes, processors, cores, threads, registers, SIMD and vector units. Moreover, heterogeneity of the systems is growing on the node as well as on the chip level. Most applications and algorithms are not yet ready to utilize available capabilities and a tremendous effort is required to close the gap. Different technologies and processing models, non-adjusted interfaces, and incomplete tool chains complicate holistic programming approaches and impede programmer’s productivity. On the other hand, resource contention, data conflicts and hardware bottlenecks keep performance away from theoretical peak.


At the current state of the art in technologies and methodologies an interdisciplinary approach is required to tackle the obstacles in multicore computing. Only a comprehensive approach with contributions from computer science, applied mathematics, high performance computing, and engineering disciplines can face the multicore challenge. Compute- and memory-intensive applications can only benefit from the full hardware potential if all features on all system levels are taken into account in a holistic approach.


This conference aims to combine new aspects of multicore microprocessor technologies, parallel applications, numerical simulation, software development and tools. The primary goal is to bring together young researchers working in related fields. Contributions are welcome from all participating disciplines.


Invited Speakers

  • David Bader, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
  • Jesus Labarta, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, Spain
  • Robert Strzodka, MPI Informatik, Saarbrücken, Germany


Submission topics

Topics of interest for conference submissions include (but are not limited to):

  • Emerging hardware architectures (Multicore, GPUs, Cell, FPGAs, Accelerators, ...)

  • Parallel programming models, environments and languages (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL, PGAS, ...) for multicore computing
  • Parallelization strategies in hybrid and hierarchical setups

  • Hardware-aware computing and auto-tuning strategies

  • Heterogeneous computing, adaptive and reconfigurable computing

  • Mathematical modeling and design of parallel algorithms
  • Aspects of microprocessor technologies
  • Prospect of manycore technologies

  • Virtualization strategies and hardware transparency

  • Library and tool support

  • Scalability issues
  • Portability of software solutions
  • Performance analysis and modeling

  • Parallel data structures

  • Architecture-aware approaches for parallel numerical simulations, implementation and algorithm design

  • Compiler techniques and code optimization strategies for parallel systems

  • Memory behavior analysis and parallel data access

  • Efficient numerical methods

  • Practice and experience of multicore programming

  • Benchmarking results of scientific applications

  • Parallel applications (e.g. numerical simulation, image processing)
  • Multicore application studies
  • Interdisciplinary approaches and theoretical concepts

 Conference language is English.

In case of any questions, please contact the organizers by sending your request to info@multicore-challenge.org.