TCSC Newsletters Volume 3 No.1

Announcements about TFCC Activities and Achievements

• Official TFCC Membership
  We strongly urge everyone interested in Cluster Computing to register as a Task Force on Cluster Computing (TFCC) member with the IEEE Computer Society. Membership is free and you do not have to be an IEEE Computer Society member. There are two easy ways to sign up:
  • Download form from http://www.dgs.monash.edu.au/~rajkumar/tfcc/tfcc-mem-form.pdf. Then print, fill it out, and fax to: +1-202-728-9614.
    
  • OR register online at IEEE Computer Society web page at: http://computer.org/tcsignup/

  
  When you are an official member, we can serve you better. And the IEEE Computer Society knows that the Task Force is strong and healthy. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to "vote with your feet" and register!
  

  
  

• TFCC has an on-line discussion group of over 450 individuals interested in cluster computing. Click to see how to subscribe. Contributions sent to the list are automatically archived. Anyone can browse the past discussion messages at the TFCC-L discussion Archive.
  

  
  

• The IEEE Computer Society's Task Force on Cluster Computing (TFCC) initiated a project that lists the World's TOP Clusters much like the TOP500 Supercomputers' web page. We request you submit data on your cluster to http://www.topclusters.org.Please visit to see the latest rankings.
  

  
  

• "Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing" research papers repository at on-line Computing Research Repository (CoRR). More information available at http://www.ieeetfcc.org/ClusterArchive.html. To browse, search, subscribe or submit, please click on CoRR's Website/URL: http://arXiv.org/archive/cs/intro.html. CoRR is available to all members of the community free of charge.
  

  
  

• Our Third IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER 2001) will be at Sutton Place Hotel, Newport Beach, California, USA, October 8-11, 2001 URL: http://andy.usc.edu/cluster2001/
  

  
  

• The TFCC sponsored IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) will be 15-18 May 2001 in Brisbane, Australia URL: http://www.ccgrid2001.qut.edu.au
  

  
  

• Some of the CCGrid 2001 presentation slides of keynote, tutorials, invited, and industry talks are available for download http://www.ccgrid.org/ccgrid2001/ (go to Final program and click on respective titles to download PPT version of slides).
  

  
  

• The NEXT TFCC sponsored IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid 2002) will be in Berlin, Germany, May 21-24, 2002 URL: http://www.ccgrid.org/ccgrid2002/
  

  
  

• Two members of TFCC Dan Hyde and Barry Wilkinson have organized the first International Workshop on Cluster Computing Education as part of IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) May 15-18, 2001 Brisbane, Australia URL: http://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw/CLUSTER-EDU_2001/
  

  
  

• 50 complimentary copies of Grid Computing: Proceedings of First IEEE/ACM International Workshop (GRID 2000) were distributed to TFCC members who are educators by Co-Chairs Rajkumar Buyya and Mark Baker as part of the TFCC Education Promotion and Book Donation program. Copies donated by publisher Springer Verlag, Germany.
  

  
  

• Grid Computing: Proceedings of First IEEE/ACM International Workshop (GRID 2000) is ONLINE. Go to Technical Program and link to online version. URL: http://www.gridcomputing.org/grid2000
  

  
  

• TFCC's White Paper on Cluster Computing available at URL: http://www.dcs.port.ac.uk/~mab/tfcc/WhitePaper/
  

  
  

• Clusters at TOP500 debuts -- The TOP500 Team is publishing a new list about the top 100 High-Performance Clusters. Several TFCC members have collaborated with the TOP500 team to make this come about. The old TFCC web site http://www.TopClusters.org now points to this new web site. URL: http://www.top500.org/news/clusters-pr.php3

Conference Announcements

• High Performance Computing 2001 (HPC) Special Track on "High Performance Simulation Environments" part of 2001 Advanced Simulation Technology Conference (ASTC2001) April 22th-26th, 2001 Renaissance Madison Hotel, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. URL: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/conferences/SimEnv.html
  

  
  

• Third IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER2001) Sutton Place Hotel, Newport Beach, California, USA, Oct. 8-11, 2001 URL: http://andy.usc.edu/cluster2001/
  

  
  

• International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2001) (Formerly IPPS & SPDP) April 23-27, 2001, San Francisco, California, USA. URL: http://www.ipdps.org/
  

  
  

• IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) 16-18 May 2001 in Brisbane, Australia URL: http://www.ccgrid2001.qut.edu.au
  

  
  

• Euro-Par'2001 Manchester University, England, from 28th to 31st August 2001 URL: http://europar.man.ac.uk/
  

  
  

• Joint Intl. Conference on Measurement & Modeling of Computer Systems - SIGMETRICS 2001 / Performance 2001 June 16-20th, 2001 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA URL: http://www.cs.umd.edu/conference/sigmetrics2001
  

  
  

• 28th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2001) Goteborg, Sweden June 30-July 4, 2001URL: http://www.ee.princeton.edu/~isca2001/
  

  
  

• High Performance Computing and Networking Europe 2001 (HPCN Europe 2001) Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 25-27, 2001 (NOTE DATE CHANGE!) URL: http://www.wins.uva.nl/events/HPCN2001/
  

  
  

• Thirteenth Annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA) Crete Island, Greece, July 4-6, 2001 URL: http://www.spaa-conference.org

  
  

• Second International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications, and Techniques (PDCAT 2001) National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, July 9-11, 2001
  For more information please contact the program chair Yen-Chun Lin at yclin@et.ntust.edu.tw
  

  
  

• 2001 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA2001), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; June 25-28, 2001 URL: http://www.ashland.edu/~iajwa/conferences/pdpta/
  

  
  

• 2001 International Conference on Computational Science San Francisco, California, USA, May 28 - 30, 2001 URL: http://www.ucalgary.ca/iccs
  

  
  

• The World Internet & Electronic Cities Conference May 1-3, 2001 in Kish Island Iran.
  URL: http://members.tripod.com/~h_s_shahhoseini/wiecc2001
  

  
  

• 2001 International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS'2001)May 28-30, 2001, Hilton San Francisco and Towers, San Francisco, USA URL: http://www.ucalgary.ca/iccs/

  
  

• 8th International Conference on High Performance Computing HiPC2001, December 17-20, 2001, Hyderabad, India
  URL: http://www.hipc.org
  

  
  

• SC2001 "Beyond Boundaries" high-performance networking
  and computing conference - global technical conference on the Grid, Denver,
  Colorado, November 10-16, 2001
  URL: http://www.sc2001.org
  

  
  

• 9th Intl. Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication (ADCOM) 2001, Bhubaneswar, India December 16-19, 2001

  URL: http://www.ADCOMxy.org
  

  
  

• 29th International Conference on Parallel Processing ICPP 2001
  Valencia, Spain, September 3-7, 2001
  URL: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~panda/icpp01/
  

  
  

• International Workshop on Cluster Computing Hotel Mangalia, Mangalia, Romania,1 - 6 September 2001
  URL: http://www.infoiasi.ro/~iwcc2001/

  
  

• IFIP World Congress 2002 Montreal, Canada, August 25-30, 2002
  URL: http://www.cips.ca/info2002/en/index.html
  

  
  

• Thirteenth IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS 2001)
  Anaheim, California, USA, August 21-14, 2001
  URL: http://www.iasted.com/conferences/2001/anaheim/pdcs.htm
  

• EWOMP 2001 Third European Workshop on OpenMP in conjunction with PACT 2001 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques, Barcelona, Spain - September 8-9th, 2001
  URL: http://www.ac.upc.es/ewomp2001
  

  
  

• Workshop on Agent Technology for Grid Computing May 17, 2001 in Trento, Italy
  URL: http://sra.itc.it/events/agents4grid/

Call for Papers - Conferences

• IFIP World Congress 2002 Montreal, Canada, August 25-30, 2002. URL: http://www.cips.ca/info2002/en/index.html
  Deadline: For tutorials, workshops October 15, 2001
  Deadline: For papers December 3, 2001
  

Call for Papers - Journals

• Annual Review of Scalable Computing Volume 4 Year 2002 Draft papers due August, 2001 Contact: C K Yuen School of Computing National University of Singapore Kent Ridge, Singapore 119260 yuenck@comp.nus.edu.sg URL: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuenck/
  

  
  

• Special Issue on PARALLEL I/O FOR CLUSTER COMPUTING in Calculateurs Parallèles JournalURL: http://www.laria.u-picardie.fr/~cerin/=IO Submission Deadline: 18 August, 2001
  

  
  

• IEEE Distributed Systems Online has a section on Cluster Computing. TFCC Co Chair Mark Baker invites TFCC members to send newsworthy articles, short papers, links to projects to him at Mark.Baker@computer.org. URL: http://computer.org/dsonline
  

  
  

• Journal of Performance Evaluation and Modelling for Computer Systems (PEMCS)

  welcomes submissions of new papers in all areas related to the field of performance modelling and/or the evaluation of computer systems. Contact Mark Baker Mark.Baker@computer.org URL: http://www.dcs.port.ac.uk/~mab/

Journal Announcements

• Annual Review of Scalable Computing Contents of Volume 3, 2001
  * chapter 1 (keller/reinefeld: resource management for HPC clusters)
  * chapter 2 (bubak/funika/balis/wismuller: OCM parallel tool)
  * chapter 3 ((roussev/wu: lottery based work stealing)
  * chapter 4 (segun/hurson/desai/spink/miller: transactions in mobile DB)
  * chapter 5 (yuen: architecture inclusive parallel programming)
  Copies of papers available on line at URL: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~yuenck/review.html
  

• Journal of Performance Evaluation and Modelling for Computer Systems (PEMCS) merged with the Wiley & Sons Ltd. International Journal Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience (formerly Concurrency: Practice and Experience)
  URL: http://homer.csm.port.ac.uk/Journals/PEMCS/
  URL: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc?ID=5361

Workshops

• 6th International Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming Models and Supportive Environments (HIPS 2001) (in conjunction with IPDPS 2001) April 23, 2001, San Francisco, California, USA. URL: http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~mueller/hips01/
  

  
  

• 2001 International Workshop on Cluster Infrastructure for Web Server and E-Commerce (CISC2001) organized as part of IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid'2001) May 15 - 18, 2001, Brisbane, Australia URL: http://ceng.usc.edu/~hjin/cisca2001/
  

  
  

• Sixth International Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming Models and Supportive Environments (HIPS'01) as part of IPDPS2001, San Francisco, California, USA, April 23, 2001 URL: http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~mueller/hips01
  

  
  

• 2001 International Workshop on Cluster Computing Educationas part of IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) May 15-18, 2001 Brisbane, Australia URL: http://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw/CLUSTER-EDU_2001/
  

  
  

• 2001 International Workshop on Parallel I/O on Clusters (PIC 2001) part of IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) Brisbane, Australia, May 15-18, 2001 URL: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~thakur/pic2001
  

  
  

• Global Computing on Personal Devices session organized at the IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2001) Brisbane, Australia, May 15-18, 2001 URL: http://www.ics.forth.gr/~lalis/gcpd.html
  

  
  

• First International Workshop on Internet Computing and E-Commerce (ICEC'01) in conjunction with IPDPS'01, April 27, 2001, San Francisco, California, USA URL: http://andy.usc.edu/icec2001/
  

  
  

• 15th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS 2001) May 15-18, 2001, Lake Arrowhead, California, USA URL: http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~paw/pads2001
  

  
  

• Data Models and Databases on Clusters and the Grid session at IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid 15 - 18 May 2001, Brisbane, Australia URL: http://cern.ch/hst/ccgrid/
  

  
  

• 8th Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW 2001) in conjunction with International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2001) San Francisco, California USA, April 23, 2001 URL: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~raw/
  

  
  

• Workshop in Massively Parallel Processing (WMPP) in conjunction with International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2001) San Francisco, California, USA, April 23-27, 2001 URL: http://www.mcs.kent.edu/~parallel/workshops/ipdps01-mpp/
  

  
  

• Ninth International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Real-Time Systems (WPDRTS 2001) in conjunction with the International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2001, San Francisco, California, USA, April 23-24, 2001 URL: http://csce.uark.edu/~aapon/wpdrts2001/
  

  
  

• 2001 International Workshop on Distributed Shared Memory on Clusters (DSM 2001) organized as part of IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid'2001), May 15 - 18, 2001, Brisbane, Australia URL: http://resam.univ-lyon1.fr/~llefevre/dsm2001/index.html
  

  
  

• Cluster Computing: Internals and Usage sesssion at 2001 International Conference on Computational Science, 28-30 May 2001 in San Francisco, California, USA URL: http://www.ac.upc.es/homes/toni/CCIU/index.html
  

  
  

• 2nd Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Scientific and Engineering Computing with Applications (PDSECA-01) in conjunction with 15th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS-2001) San Francisco, California, USA April 23-27, 2001
  URL: http://www.stfx.ca/people/lyang/activities/ipdps01-pdseca.html
  

  
  

• Multimedia on Clusters of Workstations (MCW-2001) held at 5th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Orlando, Florida, USA, July 22-25, 2001
  URL: http://arcos.inf.uc3m.es/~mcw2001

  
  

• Cluster Computing Workshopat Euro-Par'2001 Manchester University, England, from 28th to 31st August 2001. URL: http://homer.csm.port.ac.uk/events/europar2001/
  

  
  

• Multimedia on Clusters of Workstations: Mastering the Future (MCW-2001) Invited session to be held jointly with the The 5th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, July 22-25, 2001, Sheraton World Resort, Orlando, Florida (USA) URL: http://arcos.inf.uc3m.es/~mcw2001

  
  

• International Workshop on Metacomputing Systems and Applications MSA2001 in conjunction with the 29th International Conference on Parallel Processing ICPP'2001, Valencia, Spain September 3, 2001 URL: http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~desprez/MSA/
  

  
  

• Workshop on Caching, Coherence and Consistency (WC3 '01) in conjunction with the 2001 ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS '01), Sorrento, Italy, June 17, 2001 URL: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~wc3/
  

  
  

• Third Workshop on Java for High Performance Computingin conjunction with the 2001 ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS '01), Sorrento, Italy, June 17, 2001 URL: http://www.research.ibm.com/ninja/jhpc.html

  
  

• Large-Scale Cluster Computing Workshop Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois, May 22-25, 2001 URL: http://conferences.fnal.gov/lccws/

Tutorials

• VIA and InfiniBand Communication Architecture before the 15th International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS'01) in Sorrento, Italy, June 16, 2001. Speaker: Prof. Dhabaleswar K. Panda Affiliation: The Ohio State University - Computer Science (Half-Day) URL: http://www.cib.na.cnr.it/ics01

Product Announcements

• Microsoft Releases Computational Cluster Technical Preview Toolkit Includes the Software and Tools to Build-Your-Own Windows 2000 Cluster
  URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/hpc/toolkit.asp

New Web Sites on Cluster Computing

• Molecular Graphics Rendered by a Beowulf Cluster over the InternetURL: http://www.iumsc.indiana.edu/Beowulf/index.html

  
  

• IEEE Distributed Systems Online has a section on Cluster Computing.URL: http://computer.org/dsonline
  

  
  

• Cluster Evaluation Report describes benchmarks on a Compaq Alpha Linux cluster, an IBM Intel-based cluster, and an SGI Intel-based cluster. In addition there are comparisons with an SGI Origin2000 and a Compaq AlphaServer SC (limited results). We looked not only at processor and communication speeds but also at a throughput benchmark with a limited set of applications to see how the batch processing software would cope. Study done for the NCF (the computer branch of the Dutch NSF). URL: http://www.euroben.nl Then click on "reports directory" and select file clusterbm.ps.gz (444 KB).

  
  

• Cluster-based Network Server Projects by DARK group at Rutgers University The source code for the PRESS cluster-based network server is available at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~ricardob/servers.html.
  URL: http://www.darklab.rutgers.edu/
  

  
  

• "Scalability and Performance of OpenMP and MPI on a 128 Processor SGI Origin 2000", Glenn R. Luecke and Wei-Hua Lin, Iowa State University Ames, Iowa, USA and other Journal of Performance Evaluation and Modelling for Computer Systems (PEMCS) articles at URL: http://homer.csm.port.ac.uk/Journals/PEMCS/Papers.html

Short Article

• A Brief Summary of CCGrid 2001: Cluster and Grid Computing Symposium
  

  
  Craig A. Lee, Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles.
  

  
  The First IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid) was held on May 15-18, 2001, in Brisbane, Australia. CCGrid was hosted by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and was organized by the General Co-Chairs George Mohay (QUT) and Rajkumar Buyya (Monash University) with the Program Chair Paul Roe (QUT). CCGrid symposium enjoyed the support of the IEEE Computer Society Task Force on Cluster Computing (TFCC), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and a number of industrial supporters including Sun, IBM, Intel, Akamai, Platform Computing, and MPI Software Technology.
  

  
  CCGrid focuses on the combined areas of clusters and Grid computing, which share many related technical issues and are both areas of intense interest and rapid growth. Cluster computing has enabled low-cost entry into supercomputing performance by using clusters based on commodity components, such as processors and network infrastructure. Grid computing borrows its name from the analogy with the electrical power grid. The electrical power grid made electricity widely available and easy to use. The "information power Grid" endeavours to make the discovery and sharing of information and resources widely available and easy to use. Clusters and Grids share many communication, scheduling, monitoring, and application development issues, with Grids being the most general case since they can be heterogeneous and open-ended.

  
  Following a traditional structure, the symposium consisted of seven keynote addresses and invited talks, three tutorials, seven workshops, forty-eight technical papers, a poster session, an industry track, and a panel. The keynotes covered the spectrum of important cluster and Grid computing issues: Ian Foster of Argonne National Lab spoke on Grid architecture ("The Anatomy of the Grid: Enabling Scalable Virtual Organizations"), Andrzej Goscinski of Deakin University spoke on cluster organization and management ("Making Parallel Processing on Clusters Efficient, Transparent, and Easy for Programmers"), Satoshi Matsuoka of Tokyo Institute of Technology spoke on programming ("Grid RPC meets Data Grid: Network Enabled Services for Data Farming on the Grid"), Greg Pfister of IBM spoke on a new communication technology ("The Promise of InfiniBand for Cluster Computing"), and finally, Bruce Maggs of Akamai spoke on content delivery ("Global Internet Content Delivery"). The two invited speakers Gul Agha of University of Illinois and Jeff Bradshaw of Boeing have spoke on Actors and Agents technologies for Terraforming the Cyberspace.
  

  
  The keynotes set the tone for the rest of the symposium. The main symposium technical tracks covered component and agent approaches, Grid computing, scheduling and load balancing, message passing and communication, I/O and databases, performance evaluation, distributed shared memory, and tools for management, monitoring and debugging. The seven workshops presented more recent "work-in-progress" in areas closely related to the technical tracks: agent based cluster and Grid computing, object and component technology for cluster computing, quality of service for global computing, scheduling and load-balancing on clusters, global computing on personal devices, distributed shared memory, and cluster computing education.
  

  
  Four "best" papers were selected from the proceedings; two grid-oriented papers and two cluster-oriented papers. In the grid category, these were "Optimizing Execution of Component-based Applications Using Group Instances" by Beynon, Kurc, Sussman, and Saltz, and "Armada: A Parallel File System for Computational Grids" by Oldfield and Kotz. In the cluster category, these were "KelpIO: A Telescope-Ready Domain-Specific I/O Library for Irregular Block-Structured Application" by Broom, Fowler, and Kennedy, and "OVM: Out-of-Order Execution Parallel Virtual Machine" by Bosilca, Fedak, and Cappello.
  

  
  The symposium concluded with a panel: "The Grid: Moving It to Prime Time" that was moderated by David Abramson. Panellists included Satoshi Matsuoka, Craig Lee, Gul Agha, and Bruce Maggs. Besides discussing the myriad of technical issues surrounding the development of effective Grid computing in general, the panel discussed the even more problematic issues of moving grids from the scientific and engineering communities to be part of the mainstream-computing infrastructure that is enveloping the world.
  

  
  Grid computing has emerged as the predominant approach for wide-area, high-performance computing, but other approaches, such as Peer-to-Peer Computing and CORBA, are also emerging, and these technologies are motivated more by the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. However, these application domains are faced with the same fundamental problems, e.g., resource discovery, scheduling, security, etc., but the solution spaces and potential implementations could be quite different and determined by the commercial marketplace. Hence, the future of cluster and Grid computing will be heavily influenced by how they co-evolve with these other global computing paradigms.
  

  
  CCGrid 2001 was highly successful by any standards, and especially for a new symposium. It attracted world-renown computer scientists from 28 countries with a high-quality program. CCGrid 2002 has already been announced to be in Berlin, Germany, May 21-24, 2002. Full details are available at http://www.ccgrid.org/ccgrid2002/. For further information on related events hosted by the Task Force on Cluster Computing, see: http://www.ieeetfcc.org/
  

  Author Contact:
  

  
  

  
  Dr. Craig A. Lee, lee@aero.org
  Section Manager, High Performance Computing
  The Aerospace Corp. M1-102
  2350 East El Segundo Blvd.
  El Segundo, CA 90245
  voice: 310-336-1381
  fax: 310-336-4402

  http://www.aero.org
  

  
  CCGrid Symposium Contact:
  

  
  

  
  Rajkumar Buyya
  Chair, CCGrid Symposium Steering Committee
  School of Computer Science and Software Engineering
  Monash University, C5.41, Caulfield Campus
  Melbourne, VIC 3145, Australia

  Phone: +61-3-9903 1969 (office); +61-3-9571 3629 (home)
  Fax: +61-3-9903 2863; eFax: +1-801-720-9272
  Email: rajkumar@csse.monash.edu.au
  http://www.buyya.com