Prospectus

Fourth Joint PC Clustered Computing Conference (JPC4-4)
January 19-20, 1999
Pasadena Doubletree Hotel
Pasadena, California
http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/jpc44/

Workshop Chair: Jim Pool
Program Co-Chair: Bill Gropp
Program Co-Chair: John Salmon
with
Executive Chair: Thomas Sterling

The fourth in a series of DOE and NASA sponsored workshops related to
clustered computing is to be held in Pasadena on January 19th and 20th,
1999. This is the first jointly sponsored workshop in this area and is
being organized to advance the state of practical computing employing
mass market commodity computing components. The intent of this workshop
is to bring together researchers and implementors to establish a
cooperative community involved in the implementation and application of
PC clusters.

The objective of this next Joint PC Clustered Computing Conference is to

build a consensus determining the constituents of a shared PC cluster
environment and the means of realizing it. The approach of the workshop
is to address the critical question to achieving this objective through
a series of presentations, discussions, and working groups during the
day and a half meeting. This by invitation-only forum will include
colleagues from academia, industry, and government laboratories active
in the development and application of PC clusters, their supporting
software, and applications. Key focus areas include:

1. Workload scheduling and multi-user sharing
2. Parallel I/O and secondary storage
3. System Administration
4. Communications performance
5. Programming environments

Preparation for JPC4-4 will include distribution of findings from
previous related workshops and forums, initial candidate tools,
representative methodologies, and proposals for near term
directions. Working groups will be organized prior to the workshop with
target goals specified and issues shared electronically.

Program Committee:

Bill Gropp, ANL , Co-Chair
John Salmon, Caltech, Co-Chair

Don Becker, CESDIS
Robert Clay, Sandia
Tom Cwik, JPL
John Dorband, GSFC
Al Geist, ORNL
David Halstead, DOE Ames
Rusty Lusk, ANL
Bill Nitzberg, ARC
Rod Oldehoeft, LANL
Bill Saphir, NERSC
Daniel Savarese, Caltech
Thomas Sterling, Caltech/JPL