Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies

On April 5, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the stratospheric ozone in the Arctic had suffered an unprecedented drop over the winter and early spring, causing a large area of very thin ozone much like the annual ozone hole that forms in the Antarctic.  U. of I. atmospheric sciences professor Don Wuebbles, an expert in stratospheric ozone, explains the processes behind ozone depletion and the implications of the record low levels.

University of Illinois computer science professor Laxmikant (Sanjay) Kale was elevated to fellow of the IEEE.  This honor, the highest in the IEEE, is given to IEEE Senior Members with “an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.”

The Coordinated Science Laboratory and the College of Engineering have launched a new Parallel Computing Institute to advance high-performance computing research and education. PCI will be headed by director Bill Gropp of Computer Science and chief scientist Wen-mei Hwu of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both of whom are also involved in the Blue Waters project and the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies. 

Bill Gropp, a Blue Waters co-principal investigator, deputy director for research of IACAT, and the Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science, has been named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for his development of algorithms and software for high-performance scientific computing, including the development of MPI. Congrats, Bill!

In February 2011, IACAT deputy director for research Bill Gropp gave a talk at TED x UIUC on the role of supercomputers and mathematical modeling in discovering new information and improving our world.

Daniel J. Bernstein, University of Illinois at Chicago, will give a talk on a "Usable assembly language for GPUs" at 1:30 p.m. March 30 in Room 1030 of the NCSA Building. Bernstein will present a case study illustrating the benefits of a new assembly language, "qhasm-cudasm," for serious programming on GPUs, specifically NVIDIA's Tesla-architecture GPUs: GTX 280, GTX 295, AC, Lincoln, Longhorn, etc.

A new book is available on using graphics-processing units (GPUs) for computationally-intense applications. GPU Computing Gems provides a wealth of tested, proven GPU techniques, compiled by editor (and Illinois professor) Wen-mei W. Hwu.

ECE Professor Wen-Mei W. Hwu will participate in a three-year, $2.6 million grant from the Department of Energy as part of a team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Oregon, and Georgia Tech to design a Next-Generation Software Infrastructure for Productive Heterogeneous Exascale Computing.

TEDxUIUC 2011 (Feb. 19) will showcase over 20 talks and performances under the overarching theme "New Frontiers." Among the speakers will be IACAT researchers William Gropp, one of the principal investigators for the Blue Waters supercomputer, and Don Wuebbles. For details, see http://www.tedxuiuc.com/.

In late December 2010, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report called "Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology." The report assessed the federal investment in networking and information technology R&D. Computer science professor Bill Gropp, one of the principal investigators on the Blue Waters project at NCSA and a member of the report's working group, shares some of his thoughts on the document's recommendations for high-performance computing.