ACAT 2014 Workshop

Today was the conclusion of the 16th international workshop for Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques (ACAT) in physics research. I am extremely glad to have attended this excellent workshop. It was very well organised and sported a wide variety of topics from new computing hardware and techniques to algorithms and even some physics theory, making a well rounded program. The networking and friend-making opportunities were also great.

My talk was an overview of the research the group at Wits has performed so far, as well as details on my progress and plans for the PCI-Express SoC interconnect. There was also a poster from the University of Cape Town, but unfortunately Josh (the author) was unable to attend the conference. I presented the poster in his stead to much interest from the community.

There were two other talks and a plenary by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center on ARM System on Chips. Several other talks also made passing mention of ARMs potential suitability for scientific computing. All of these presentations were met with positive comments and questions from the audience.

I felt honored several times as the organizers and ACAT founders repeatedly mentioned that they had a South African participant (the first apparently)! Our project also received several mentions in the summaries - enhanced by the South African label.

I look forward to attending the workshop again in 18 months time and I hope next time more South Africans will be fortunate enough to attend. Perhaps with the Square Kilometer Array project surging ahead, we can attract the ACAT workshop to South Africa in a few years?

Announcement of Kruger 2014

WORKSHOP ON DISCOVERY PHYSICS AT THE LHC

KRUGER-2014

December 1 - 6, 2014

Protea Hotel Kruger Gate

Portia Shabangu Road, Skukuza, Mpumulanga, South Africa
Dear Colleagues

We are pleased to announce the Third  Biennial

   "Workshop on Discovery Physics at the LHC" (KRUGER 2014)
The Workshop will be held at the 4-star Protea Hotel Kruger Gate,
just 100 meters from the  entrance to the Kruger National Park.

Please find details in the conference web page
http://www.kruger2014.tlabs.ac.za
The conference aims to promote scientific exchange of new results
and development of
novel ideas and models related to the physics of the LHC.
The following topics will be covered:
 Particle Physics,
  Heavy Ion Physics,
 Physics  after the discovery of the  Brout-Englert-Higgs boson.
Accommodation, registration, abstract submission and other practical
details can be found
on the web page. Attendance will be limited to about 100 participants
because of the number of available  rooms in the hotel.

Students are encouraged to also take part in a related workshop/school on
  ``Hot and Dense Nuclear & Astrophysical Matter - HDM2014''
which will be organized by Professor Azwinndini
Muronga (amuronga@uj.ac.za)  at the University of Mafeking
November 24 - 28, 2014.

Other related events of interest to students are:
  ``Chris Engelbrecht School in Particle Physics'',
January 12 - 21, 2015,
and the
  ``High Performance Signal and Data Processing'',
January 26 - 30, 2015.
Limited funding for South African students is available.
We look forward to seeing you all in South Africa

The organizers of KRUGER-2014:

O. Boeriu (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)  Z. Buthelezi  (iThemba LABS)

J. Cleymans (UCT, Cape Town) (Chair)  A. S. Cornell
(NITHeP/Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

S. H. Connell (UJ, Johannesburg)  T. Dietel     (UCT, Cape Town)

S. Frtsch    (iThemba LABS)  N. Haasbroek  (iThemba LABS) (Secretary)

A. Hamilton (UCT, Cape Town)  W. A. Horowitz (UCT, Cape Town)

S. Karataglidis (UJ, Johannesburg)  B. Mellado  (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

E. Sideras-Haddad  (Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)  T. Vickey
(Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

H. Weigert   (UCT, Cape Town)  S. Yacoob    (UKZN, Durban)

The email address of the conference is kruger2014@tlabs.ac.za

First Wits press release of January's workshop: Big data under the spotlight

The Wits press office has released the first piece to advertise the Big Data workshop in January:

http://www.wits.ac.za/newsroom/newsitems/201312/22094/news_item_22094.html

Check it out!

Big data under spotlight

15 November 2013

One of the biggest challenges for scientists this century will be to develop supercomputers that can process huge data output from big science projects such as the Square Kilometre Array.
To address this and other data questions, renowned world physicists and engineers will be attending the 2014 High-performance Signal and Data Processing workshop to be held at Wits University from 27 to 31 January 2014.

They include Dr Peter Jenni, one of the “founding fathers” and former spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, and Dr Bernie Fanaroff, Wits alumni and Project Director of the Square Kilometre Array.
“There are supercomputers in the world, but they are essentially doing a lot of computation and are extremely expensive. We want to process big flows of data,” says Professor Bruce Mellado from the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) in the School of Physics at Wits University. Together with his colleagues in HEP and fellow workshop organisers, Dr Oana Boeriu and Dr Trevor Vickey, Mellado and his team is developing and building a high-throughput supercomputer.

“Called the Massive Affordable Computing (MAC) project, HEP aims to use existing computer elements available on the market to build supercomputers that are cheap and energy efficient,” Mellado says.

Processing the vast quantities of data that the SKA will produce will require very high performance central supercomputers capable of 100 petaflops per second processing power. This is about 50 times more powerful than the current most powerful supercomputer and equivalent to the processing power of about one hundred million PCs. The technological challenges related to high-throughput data flows at the ATLAS detector today are common to those facing the SKA in the future.

With this workshop, themed Challenges in Astro- and Particle Physics and Radio Astronomy Instrumentation, the organisers aim to bring together key people to discuss the grand challenges facing the signal processing community in Radio Astronomy, Gamma Ray Astronomy and Particle Physics. But, the development of high-throughput computers will also have a revolutionary impact on data processing in all fields of science - including the medical sciences, palaeosciences and engineering - and the organisers hope to attract delegates from those fields of study as well.
The workshop will also have plenary sessions for in-depth presentations and knowledge sharing between delegates will be in lecture format, as well as a classroom environment for hands-on hardware training. General overviews and in-depth presentations will be given.

Students and young researches are also welcome to deliver presentations and encouraged to submit abstracts. The registration and abstract submission are now open till 31 December 2013.
It is envisioned to publish a book of proceedings. Proceedings will be peer reviewed. The deadline for proceedings submission is 15 February 2014. The conference is co-presented by the SKA Africa, the University of Cape Town, the National Research Foundation/iThemba Labs, Stellenbosch University and CERN-SA.

High-performance Signal and Data Processing Workshop

We are very happy to announce the workshop High-performance Signal and Data Processing 2014. The workshop aims to bring together key people to discuss grand challenges facing the signal processing community in Radio Astronomy, Gamma Ray Astronomy and Particle Physics, and to provide knowledge sharing to delegates in both a lecture format, as well as a classroom environment for hands-on hardware and software training. General overviews and in-depth presentations will be given.

The event will take place at the Wits Professional Development HUB at the University of the Witwatersrand, the week of January 27th to January 31st 2014. We are honored to have the following keynote speakers at the event:

Dr. Daniel Adams, Chief Director: Emerging Research Areas and Infrastructure at the DST

Prof. Jean Cleymans, Chairman of SA-CERN

Dr. Bernard Fanaroff, SKA Project Director

Dr. Peter Jenni, former Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at CERN

Prof. Justin Jonas, MeerKAT Associate Director of Science and Engineering

Prof. Naba Mondal, Spokesperson of the India-based Neutrino Observatory

Keynote addresses will be followed by plenary sessions for in-depth presentations by experts in areas of physics and engineering. Students and young researches are also welcome to deliver presentations. Several hands-on sessions with FPGA-based boards, RHINO and ROACH, will be provided. A session on Grid software is also envisioned.

The registration and abstract submission are now open till December 31st 2013. It is envisioned to publish a book of proceedings. Proceedings will be peer reviewed. The deadline for proceedings submission is February 15th 2014. Students and young researchers are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts and proceedings.

There are funding opportunities for students outside the Johannesburg area. Preference will be given to South African students.

Visit the site at: http://www.hpspsa.com/ to get more information.

The flyer can be found here.