Register for July 17 ACM-SIGHPC Learning Webcast, "Changing How Programmers Think about Parallel Programming"

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Register TODAY to attend the next free ACM Webcast, "Changing How Programmers Think about Parallel Programming," presented on Wednesday, June 17, 2013, at 2 PM ET (1 pm CT/12 noon MT/11 am PT/6 pm GMT), part of the ACM Learning Webinar series. Join William Gropp, Director of the Parallel Computing Institute at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and moderator John West, Director of the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The talk will be followed by a live question and answer session. (If you'd like to attend but can't make it to the virtual event, you still need to register to receive a recording of the webinar when it becomes available.)

(Note: You can stream this and all ACM Learning Webinars on your mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.)

This special webcast, presented in partnership with ACM's Special Interest Group on High-Performance Computing (SIGHPC), will provide an introduction to parallel execution models, focusing on how programmers think about writing programs.

Does the way that programmers or algorithm developers think about the way a parallel computer works influence the approaches that they take? Can the choice of programming approach lead to inefficient solutions? Do we need new ways to program parallel systems? This session will explore common approaches for developing parallel programs and how they can limit scalability and reliability–whether the programs are for single chip parallelism or the world’s largest parallel computers. The importance of an execution model and its relationship to programming models and programming systems will be covered, and why we need to consider new execution models for the parallel systems of the future.

What You'll Learn About:

  • What an execution model is
  • The difference between an execution model, programming model, and programming system
  • How an execution model influences how a programmer thinks about implementing parallelism
  • Common parallel programming approaches and how they can lead to poor scalability

Duration: 60 minutes

Presenter: clip_image002
William Gropp, University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign; SIGHPC
William Gropp is the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the Department of Computer Science, Deputy Director for Research for the Institute of Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies, and Director of the Parallel Computing Institute at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1982.  He was on the faculty of the Computer Science Department of Yale University from 1982-1990 and a member of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory from 1990-2007.  His research interests are in parallel computing, software for scientific computing, and numerical methods for partial differential equations. He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and SIAM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Moderator: clip_image004
John West, DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program; SIGHPC
John West is Director of the High Performance Computing Modernization Program, a DoD-wide program that provides high performance computing expertise, computing, storage, and communications resources for the Department. He has held a number of positions in private industry and the federal government, including a tour as Director of the Scientific Computing Research Center at the Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and 5 years as director of the ERDC DoD Supercomputing Resource Center. Today he serves in a variety of community roles, including co-chair of the High End Computing working group for NITRD, associate editor of IEEE/AIP Computing in Science and Engineering, and officer in the ACM Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC). He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University, and has written extensively on high performance computing, technology, and leadership.

Click here to register for this free webinar and be sure to share this with friends and colleagues who may be interested in this topic. And check out our past events, all available on demand.