High Performance Interconnects
for Distributed Computing (HPI-DC)

Program Highlights:

Research talks by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Naval Research Laboratory
Industry talk by David Southwell, President and CEO, Obsidian Strategics Inc.
Two sessions of technical paper presentations
Panel discussion on "Disruptive Forces in Distributed High Performance Communication Services"

The HPI-DC 2009 workshop will be held in conjunction with CLUSTER 2009), in New Orleans, LA.

The emergence of 10.0 GigE and above, InfiniBand and other high-performance interconnection technologies, programmable NICs and networking platforms, and protocols like DDP and RDMA over IP, make it possible to create tightly linked systems across physical distances that exceed those of traditional single cluster or server systems. These technologies can deliver communication capabilities that achieve the performance levels needed by high end applications in enterprise systems and like those produced by the high performance computing community. Furthermore, the manycore nature of next generation platforms and the creation of distributed cloud computing infrastructure will greatly increase the demand for high performance communication capabilities over wide area distances.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the confluence of distributed computing and communications technologies with high performance interconnects, as applicable or applied to realistic high end applications. The intent is to create a venue that will act as a bridge between researchers developing tools and platforms for high-performance distributed computing, end user applications seeking high performance solutions, and technology providers aiming to improve interconnect and networking technologies for future systems. The hope is to foster knowledge creation and intellectual interchanges between HPC and Cloud computing end users and technology developers, in the specific domain of high performance distributed interconnects.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Hardware/software architectures for communication infrastructures for HPC and Cloud Computing

• Data and control protocols for interactive and large data volume applications

• Novel devices and technologies to enhance interconnect properties

• Interconnect-level issues when extending high performance beyond single machines, including  architecture, protocols, services, QoS, and security

• Remote storage (like iSCSI), remote databases, and datacenters, etc

• Development tools, programming environments and models (like PGAS, OpenShmem, Hadoop, etc.), ranging from programming language support to simulation environments