Berkeley Lab to Host Sixth Workshop on the DOE Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection for HPC Applications

BERKELEY , Calif. — Need to find robust and reliable software tools to minimize the development time of your application? Need to scale up the complexity of your application? Need to integrate large and complex applications? Are you ready for high performance computing?

If so, a four-day workshop introducing the DOE Advanced CompuTational Software (ACTS) Collection will provide hands-on instruction in building robust scientific and engineering high-end computing applications. The workshop will be held Aug. 23-26 at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

The ACTS Collection comprises a set of tools mainly developed at DOE laboratories and proven in many applications and fields in computational sciences. These software tools aim to simplify the solution of common and important computational problems and have substantially benefited a wide range of scientific and industrial applications. Not only have the ACTS tools been used to help applications run more efficiently in high performance computing environments, but they have also helped users achieve computations that would not have been possible otherwise.

“The Sixth ACTS workshop is a unique opportunity for application developers to meet tool developers and learn about the tool functionalities through hands-on sessions,” said Osni Marques, co-organizer of the workshop. “Participants will also have ample time to discuss their particular computational needs and get advice from experts.”

The number of attendees is limited to maximize one-to-one interactions between application and tool developers.

The four-day workshop will present an introduction to the ACTS Collection for application scientists whose research needs include either large amounts of computation, complex software integration, distributed computing, the use of robust numerical algorithms, or combinations of these. The workshop will include a range of tutorials on the tools (those currently available in the collection and some deliverables from the DOE SciDAC ISICs), discussion sessions aimed at solving specific computational needs of the participants, and hands-on practice using NERSC's state-of-the-art computers.

The workshop will be organized in parallel sessions and the tutorials will be grouped by the following topics:

• Direct and iterative methods for the solution of linear and non-linear systems of equations
• PDEs and multi-level methods
• Numerical optimization
• Structured and unstructured meshes (generation, manipulation and computation)
• Development of high performance computing applications
• Performance monitoring and tuning
• Software interoperability

Who should attend this workshop?

This workshop is open to computational scientists from industry and academia. Registration fees are fully sponsored by the DOE's Office of Science. In addition, DOE will sponsor travel expenses for a limited number of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. This support includes round-trip transportation to and from Berkeley, local transportation in Berkeley, lodging, breakfasts, lunches and workshop materials.

The format of this workshop is tailored to the computational problems and needs of its participants and the functionality available in the ACTS Collection. To effectively meet our goals, the number of participants is limited, and people interested in attending must fill out an on-line application form no later than Saturday, June 25, 2005. In addition, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows applying for travel support must provide a letter of support from their advisor or supervisor. This letter must also be submitted on-line and no later than the June 25, 2005 deadline.