[Crib-list] SPEAKER: Robert van de Geijn -- Computational Research in Boston and Beyond Seminar (CRIBB) -- Friday, March 2, 2012 -- NEW TIME: 12:00 Noon in Building 32, Room 124 (Stata)

[Shirley Entzminger]

 		  COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH in BOSTON and BEYOND SEMINAR


DATE:		FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012
NEW TIME:	12:00 PM
LOCATION:	Building 32, Room 124  (Stata Center)

Pizza and beverages will be provided at 11:45 AM.


TITLE:		Design by Transformation - Application to Dense
 		Linear Algebra Libraries


SPEAKER:	ROBERT van de GEIJN  (University of Texas at Austin)


ASTRACT:

The FLAME project has yielded modern alternatives to LAPACK and related 
effort.  An attractive feature of this work is the complete vertical 
integration of the entire software stack, starting with low level kernels 
that support the BLAS and finishing with a new distributed memory library, 
Elemental.  In between are layers that target a single core, multicore, 
and multiGPU architectures.  What this now enables is a new approach where 
libraries are viewed not as instantiations in code but instead as a 
repository of algorithms, knowledge about those algorithm, and knowledge 
about target architectures.  Representations in code are then mechanically 
generated by a tool that performs optimizations for a given architecture 
by applying high-level transformations much like a human expert would. 
We discuss how this has been used to mechanically generate tens of 
thousands of different distributed memory implementations given a single 
sequential algorithm.  By attaching cost functions to the component 
operations, a highly optimized implementation is chosen by the tool.  The 
chosen optimization invariably matches or exceeds the performance of 
implementations by human experts.  We call the underlying approach Design 
by Transformation (DxT).


Biography:

Robert van de Geijn is a Professor of Computer Science and member of the 
Institute for Computating Engineering and Sciences at UT-Austin. He 
received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland. 
His interests are in linear algebra libraries, scientific computing, 
parallel computing, and formal derivation of programs.  His FLAME project 
pursues how fundamental techniques from computer science support 
high-performance linear algebra libraries.  He has written more than a 
hundred refereed articles and several books on this subject.

This work is in collaboration with Bryan Marker, Don Batory, Jack Poulson, 
and Andy Terrell.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

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 			http://math.mit.edu/crib