Welcome to the SCAPE Laboratory!

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Director: Prof. Kirk W. Cameron

2^nd floor, Knowledge Works II Bldg. • Department of Computer Science • Blacksburg, Virginia 24060
http://scape.cs.vt.edu

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SCAPE Lab’s Mission and Projects

The SCAlable PErformance (SCAPE) laboratory is directed by Professor Kirk W. Cameron. Our main research focus is the design, analysis and improvement of scalable systems and applications using emerging technologies. Most students that join us are accomplished C programmers with some general understanding of operating systems and architecture and some experience with Linux. Our current projects include:

1. High-end computing performance modeling and analysis

This project may be of interest to students that enjoy using or creating formal mathematical and statistical techniques to model, predict, and explain the why’s and how’s of performance on real systems. In this project we attempt to identify performance bottlenecks in high-end systems and applications using techniques such as analytical models and hardware counters.

2. High-performance, power-aware computing

This project may be of interest to students that enjoy using or creating software and hardware techniques to measure and control emergent power-aware capabilities on real systems. In this project we attempt to identify code phases and control power-aware scheduling to improve the energy efficiency of systems without negatively impacting performance.

3. High-performance systems and applications

This is a pot pourri of ongoing projects for students that are able to identify an important problem, highlight the limitations of current approaches, and propose a novel solution to the problem. The theme of these topics is usually creation of a new hardware or software technique that will aid the HPC community. Necessary skill sets here are specific to the proposed project. For example, we have successfully deployed the PBPI (Parallel Bayesian Phylogenetic Inference) toolkit that allows biologists to identify phylogenetic trees faster than previously possible. This toolkit is now in use on IBM’s Blue Gene machine – the world’s fastest supercomputer.

How to get involved: SCAPE Journal Club, 10-11:30, every other Friday, 225 KWII in the CRC

Students interested in working with Professor Cameron should attend the SCAPE Journal Club, a biweekly meeting to inform, discuss and evaluate the technical details of research in performance analysis & evaluation, power-aware computing, and other related research topics in high-end computing systems. Each session, a technical paper is selected to be presented by one of the club members, and all other attendees are required to have read the paper prior to the meeting. New students are not required to present in the first semester. Discussion is led by Professor Cameron. The SCAPE Journal club meets at 10:00-11:30 every other Friday beginning Sept. 1 in room 225 in Knowledge Work II building. See journal-club for further details.