Speaker: Nancy Lynch
Title: Distributed Computing Theory for Wireless Networks and Mobile Systems
Abstract: Modern distributed computer systems are based on platforms that change dynamically. Many of these platforms utilize wireless communication, and many involve mobility. These systems must handle complications like changing participants, changing connectivity, and message collisions with resulting losses. Designing and analyzing algorithms for these systems is very hard.
To make these tasks easier, we need a comprehensive theory for dynamic distributed systems, and particularly for wireless networks and mobile systems. Such a theory should span from physical network models to applications. It should identify key problems and sub-problems, and should include algorithms, abstraction layers, lower bound theorems, and theorems comparing the power of different platforms.
Most of this talk will be devoted to an overview of my group’s work in the past few years on theory for dynamic/wireless/mobile systems. Although many pieces of the needed theory now exist, a great deal remains to be done.
Speaker: Michael Merritt
Title: Distributed Computing: An Empirical Approach
Abstract: To be announced.
Speaker: Marc Snir
Title: Programming Models for Extreme-Scale Computing
Abstract: The first version of the MPI standard was released in November 1993. At the time, many of the authors of this standard, myself included, viewed MPI as a temporary solution, to be used until it is replaced by a good programming language for distributed memory systems. Almost twenty years later, MPI is the main programming model for High-Performance Computing, and practically all HPC applications use MPI, which is now in its third generation; nobody expects MPI to disappear in the coming decade. The talk will discuss some plausible reasons for this situation, and the implications for research on new programming models for Extreme-Scale Computing.