CHEMISTRY

The Cornell Theory Center is offering a free, hands-on, two-day course for qualified people interested in implementing high-performance computing on Windows-based clusters. The course is scheduled for January 28-29, 2004, at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Representatives from all industries and sectors, including corporations, universities, and government agencies, are invited to attend. Space is limited. Registration is required by January 19, 2004, and may be accomplished by submitting the form at http://www.tc.cornell.edu/services/edu/events/hpcpartners/. The course will focus on technical training and technical details, with discussions about installing clusters and writing parallel applications. Specific sessions will include overviews of the CTC Solutions Center, high-performance computing, and cluster computing; designing and building an HPC cluster; parallel programming with Message Passing Interface (MPI); and benchmarking. Other topics covered will include hardware and software considerations, techniques for porting Unix-style applications to the Windows platform, and the opportunity to build a Windows-based cluster. The course format includes lectures, demonstrations, and discussion. Participants will be introduced to a scheduler and resource manager for Windows-based HPC, expected to be released in early 2004. Database-driven, it will schedule both clusters and desktops, and enable users to specify precisely which machines run .NET applications. In addition to the database-driven scheduling and resource management system being developed at CTC, plans for the next version of Visual Studio include a parallel debugger. “Using a high volume, industry standard operating system such as Windows is an advantage to businesses and universities that want to implement production-quality HPC seamlessly throughout their organizations,” said CTC Executive Director Linda Callahan. “Industries that require reliable performance are turning to Windows clusters,” said Greg Rankich, High Performance Computing Solutions Manager at Microsoft. “We have recently seen large-scale Windows HPC systems deployed in the oil, digital rendering, and finance industries.” Ease of use, reduction in systems administration costs, and integration within the enterprise were among the benefits cited, according to Rankich. The course will be presented by CTC consultants, analysts, senior research associates, and systems programmers. For questions concerning registration, hotel, or travel, please contact Carol Christoffersen at 607.254.8692 or carolc@tc.cornell.edu. All other questions, including workshop content, may be directed to Susan Mehringer at 607.254.8777 or susan@tc.cornell.edu.