News and Announcements
2021/2022 Annual Report
For over 20 years, ICL has produced an annual report to provide a concise profile of our research, including information about the people and external organizations who make it all possible.
Please download a copy and check it out. Printed copies are available in Claxton 203.
You can also view all of our past reports here.
Richard Barrett announces retirement on January 31st
ICL alumni and longtime collaborator Richard Barrett has announced his retirement from Sandia effective the 31st of January. We are privileged to have Richard sum up his experience in his own words.
Dear friends,
Thirty years ago I joined the ICL. I’ve known no finer people than Jack and those in this amazing group, starting in Ayres Hall room 111: Susan, Steve, Majed, Clint, and Victor. They, and many others, helped me earn a job at Los Alamos, where I spent 10 years working on a variety of fascinating projects. More importantly, I met my wife, and we were blessed with three wonderful children. Then on to five magical years in Oak Ridge, and now almost 12 special years at Sandia. Each stop provided amazing opportunities, and more so, meeting and working with many more fine people, such as yourself.
The world of computational science and high performance computing has made for a wonderful career. With the possibility of another 30 or so years left on this planet, Gennie and I have decided to take on new adventures, most of which will keep us outside, where we love to be. So this is not a retirement, we’re calling it a retread. My last day at Sandia will be January 31. Home base will remain our adobe home on Adobe Lane in New Mexico, and we hope to continue to see and hear from you throughout the rest of our lives. Our shared personal email is gnrnslj@gmail.com. We thank you so much for enriching our lives, and we wish you the best in your professional and personal endeavors.
All the best,
Richard
One of Richard Barrett’s all time favorite photos taken at the 30 Years of Innovative Computing Conference in 2019. He feels it captures the spirit of the ICL.
Fulbright Scholar: Ivan Dimov
ICL welcomes Fulbright Scholar Prof. Ivan Dimov, D.Sc., PhD, MS.
Prof. Dimov will join ICL from February 28 – July 31, 2022. The host for his visit is Jack Dongarra, and Prof. Dimov will be working with various research teams within ICL. His project, Computational Nanophysics Based on Wigner Monte Carlo Signed Particles Approach, focuses on developing high quality Monte Carlo algorithms for solving large-scale problems. The main techniques are based on a special choice of Markov chains and definition of linear functional of the corresponding random variables such that to obtain high accuracy for a fixed computational complexity.
Prof. Dimov is the Head of the Department of Parallel Algorithms, IICT-BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria. He was Director of the Institute for Parallel Processing, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria, in the period 1996-2004. He is a Head of the Bulgarian Information Society Centre of Excellence for Education, Science and Technology in 21 Century (BIS-21), Bulgaria, from 2000, and a Chair of Scientific Council of IICT-BAS from 2010. Prof. Ivan Dimov has been Scientific secretary of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2014-2015) with the role to ameliorate the links among the governmental policies and the scientific expertise setting up a line for development of responsible research and innovation. He started his research career at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences IMI-BAS), Sofia, Bulgaria in 1982 as an Assistant Researcher in Numerical Analysis and Senior Scientific Researcher (Associate Professor) in Numerical Analysis in IMI-BAS after obtaining the second scientific degree of Doctor of sciences in 1984.
Prof. Ivan Dimov lectured as a professor at the University of Reading, UK, School of Systems Engineering, ACET Center in 2005-2007. He has published 3 monographs – Computational and Numerical Challenges in Environmental Modelling (2006), Monte Carlo Methods for Applied Scientist (2009) and (2017). He is an editor of 8 international scientific journals published in Springer-Verlag, World Scientific, Elsevier. Dimov has published over 150 articles in peer-reviewed international scientific journals, including Numerical Methods and Applications: 5th International Conference, NMA 2002, Borovets, Bulgaria, August 20-24, 2002, Revised Papers – Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2542. During the last 5 years, he has participated in 18 research projects (5 national and 13 international), whereas he coordinated 4 of these projects.
Recent Releases
New SLATE Working Notes
SLATE (Software for Linear Algebra Targeting Exascale) is being developed as part of the Exascale Computing Project (ECP), which is a joint project of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The objective of SLATE is to provide distributed, GPU-accelerated dense linear algebra capabilities to the US Department of Energy and to the high-performance computing (HPC) community at large.
The new Working Notes report (Communication Avoiding LU with Tournament Pivoting in SLATE) discusses the implementation of communication avoiding LU algorithm in SLATE. It is based on tournament pivoting strategy, that is shown to be stable in practice.
The Working Notes are available here.
ICL Resources
COVID Update
As COVID continues to change, so to do the resources and standards promoted by the university. For information on the latest COVID mandates and guidelines, please follow this link.
Work from home options will continue to be in effect throughout February and revisited in March.
If you test positive for COVID-19, are in close contact of someone with COVID-19, or if you have symptoms of COVID-19, you should complete the UT COVID-19 support form . Completing the COVID support form initiates outreach from the COVID support team who will provide guidance on your next steps.
If you have been in the office, this will allow you to report anyone that you may have come in contact with and will alert Facilities Services to deep clean and sanitize any of the areas that you were in.
Some additional reminders:
–If you are unable to work, you should record the appropriate Sick Leave hours.
–If you test positive, you should quarantine for 5 days and then make sure to mask up for the next 5 days. Although it is highly recommended that you stay masked at all times, outside your office, while on campus.
There are resources for testing and vaccinating on campus.
https://www.utk.edu/coronavirus/guides/covid-19-testing
Additional testing supplies can be obtained from this US government site
https://www.covidtests.gov/
Interview
Giuseppe Congiu
Where are you from?
I was born in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, but I spent most of my childhood in a small village surrounded by the mountains, around 60-minute driving distance from Cagliari.
Can you summarize your educational background?
I studied electrical and electronic engineering. My training ranged from microelectronics design to computer architectures and programming. Before graduating I worked on a CellBE simulator and developed an interest for high performance computing. Thus, after a short experience as software developer, I started a PhD and then a postdoc in computer science. During the years of my PhD and postdoc I worked on several aspects of HPC, such as distributed parallel file systems, scientific I/O libraries and middlewares, and distributed runtime systems.
Where did you work before joining ICL?
After graduation I worked as software developer on a medical imaging project, led by IBM, that used CellBE processors to accelerate image processing kernels. After that, I started my PhD in computer science while working for a UK based storage company named Xyratex. Interestingly, Xyratex branched out from IBM in the mid 90’s and, mostly, manufactured HDDs test units for OEMs. At the end of the 2000s, however, the company started a network storage division and developed a Lustre based storage system named ClusterStor, sold by Cray under the name of Sonexion and first installed in Blue Waters at NCSA. In 2014 Xyratex was acquired by Seagate, for which I worked for until I joined the Programming Models and Runtime Systems group at Argonne National Laboratory. Before joining ICL I also spent a short period of time working in the HPC-IO group at Fraunhofer ITWM in Germany.
How did you first hear about the lab, and what made you want to work here?
I already knew about Jack and some of his work from my first years as PhD student, but I learned about ICL only last year, when I applied for the position. The reason that made me want to work at ICL was to learn more about aspects of HPC that I have not worked on before and to collaborate with HPC experts.
What is your focus here at ICL? What are you working on?
At ICL I am working in the performance group. Most of my work is on the PAPI library. Currently, I am working on a rewrite of the library build system to make it more modern and, possibly, even easier to integrate in third party tools. I am also working on several subsystems, including the system detection component (for which we added support recently) and a rewrite of the ROCm component to improve the existing functionality and add new features.
What are your interests/hobbies outside of work?
I like cooking. When I moved to the UK, I learned how to make tiramisu and over the years I perfected my tiramisu making. Unfortunately, that had a set-back when I brought a tiramisu partially made with salt, instead of only sugar, to a coffee break at Argonne. Because of the salty/sugary taste mix, however, it was not a complete failure. Besides cooking, I also like reading, hiking and traveling (pandemic permitting).
Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.
I started travelling very late in my life. Beside a school trip to central Italy when I was 7, I never left Sardinia until the age of 27. Sardinia is closer to north Africa than mainland Italy and the ferry from Cagliari to Civitavecchia takes around 14 hours to cross the Tyrrhenian Sea. Planes were still pretty expensive when I was younger so travelling was restricted to the essential.
If you weren’t working at ICL, where would you like to be working and why?
I would like to be working for an HPC vendor, infrastructure provider or a national laboratory so to stay in an equally stimulating environment.
