ACADEMIA

NCSA's Volodymyr Kindratenko, a researcher in the center's Innovative Systems Laboratory, will be one of three guest editors for a special issue of Computing in Science & Engineering to be published in 2008 that will focus on the high-performance computing applications of novel architectures. George Thiruvathukal (Loyola University) and Steven Gottlieb (Indiana University) will join him as guest editors. Computational scientists are turning their attention to emerging computing architectures -- such as field-programmable gate arrays, the Cell processor, and GPUs -- as a way of achieving continuous application performance improvements while reducing power and space requirements. Even though most chips weren't designed with high-performance computing (HPC) applications in mind, their performance characteristics and widespread availability make them very attractive for HPC applications in spite of the relatively high entry cost when considering programmability and architectural limitations. This special issue of Computing in Science & Engineering will look at the range of emerging computing architectures from the perspective of HPC applications. Articles are sought about computational science and engineering applications ported to or implemented on these new platforms. Cases of interest could include molecular dynamics, cosmology, bioinformatics, and CFD, and methodologies such as FEM, simulation of discrete systems, and image processing. Also of interest are related developments in such areas as linear algebra, high-throughput data processing, scientific libraries, and software models for newly emerging architectures. Articles are also of interest that provide a comprehensive review of the state of the art and future trends in the use of newly emerging computing systems for developing and running engineering and scientific applications. Computing in Science & Engineering is a technical magazine with a wide-ranging readership representing all the basic sciences, interdisciplinary sciences, and engineering and applied mathematics fields. The aim of this special issue is to cross-fertilize by providing articles that are understandable and useful to people in as many of these areas as possible. Therefore, papers submitted for consideration should provide application implementation details as well as insights into the process of choosing suitable architectures for a range of applications. Manuscripts accepted for consideration will be peer reviewed prior to acceptance for publication and will be edited for style prior to publication. The acceptance process is expected to be competitive and prospective authors are urged to first discuss their ideas with the guest editors. Final submissions should be limited to 2,400 to 7,200 words with pictures counting as 250 words each. Refer to www.computer.org/portal/pages/cise/content/author.html for submission instructions. Submission deadline is Feb. 1, 2008.