MK at ISCA
June 28, 2010
[MK] Todd
I just returned from ISCA (IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture), which took place from June 21 to 23 in Saint Malo, France. There were approximately 400 Computer Architecture researchers, academics, and industry professionals in attendance.
ISCA started off with a keynote from Bill Dally of NVIDIA. He urged attendees in academia to “fail fast” – don’t spend time on research that’s not going to pan out, but move onto more viable ideas. He suggested that researchers partner with industry to ensure the commercial viability of their projects. I asked what people thought of this – some students agreed with Bill in principle but lamented processes that require extended periods of evaluation prior to determining the viability of research.
Morgan Kaufmann had a table in the “lounge” and coffee area. The staff was punctual – there was a set a time for le cafe and it would not be served a minute early! However, this ensured a good rush of attendees at regular intervals despite few exhibitors. Morgan Claypool displayed copies of their “Synthesis Lecture Series,” particularly The Datacenter as a Computer, which editor Mark Hill reported was a top seller. I was glad to hear it – Datacenter-level parallelism is a key update to the fifth edition of our Computer Architecture. Although we didn’t have sample books on hand, most people I spoke to knew our top titles in this area, including recently published Programming Massively Parallel Processors.
Buzz topics at ISCA this year included cloud-on-chip systems, GPU programming with CUDA, and using Python for scientific computing, or as one person put it, “you want to compute faster, but you want to build your application with a familiar tool.” Next year’s conference will be June 4-8 in San Jose, California. Visit isca2011.umaine.edu for more information.
Todd Green
Senior Acquisitions Editor
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
