CGL Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, February 28, 1996

Location:
DC 1304
Time:
12:30 PM
Chair:
Gilles Khouzam

1. Adoption of the Agenda - additions or deletions

2. Coffee Hour

Coffee hour this week:
None: U of T visit... Lab Cleanup on Friday
Coffee hour next week:
Navid Sadikali

3. Next meeting

Date:
March 6, 1996
Location:
DC 1304
Time:
12:30 PM
Chair:
John Kominek
Technical presentation:
Fabrice Jaubert

4. Forthcoming

Chairs:
  1. Rob Kroeger
  2. Iain Little
  3. Steve Mann
Tech Presenters:
  1. Rick Kazman
  2. Gilles Khouzam
  3. John Kominek

5. Technical Presentations

Presenter:
Ryan Gunther
Abstract: Top Ten Blunders by Visual Designers

6. General Discussion Items

7. Action List

8. Director's Meeting

9. Seminars



                   The University of Waterloo
                      200 University Avenue
                        Waterloo, Ontario


           The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)

                      Presents a Seminar on

    Parallelism and C++:  Maybe the Unknowns Will Cancel Out



by:     Dr. Gregory V. Wilson, Research Scientist

of:     Center for Advanced Studies
        IBM Canada Ltd.
        North York, Ontario


Date:   Tuesday, March 5, 1996
Time:   2:30  pm.
Place:  William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1302


Abstract:

C++ is fast becoming the most  widely  used  systems  programming
language.   It  is also starting to be employed by scientists and
engineers for numerical programming.  At the same time, the  most
powerful  high-performance computers are now multiprocessors with
either shared or distributed memory.  While extensions  for  For-
tran programming on such platforms have emerged, there is no con-
sensus on how, or even whether, to extend C++  to  handle  and/or
disguise such things as multiple address spaces, asynchronous ex-
ecution, symmetric multiprocessing, and  communication  topology.
This  talk will compare and contrast the pros and cons of several
different approaches, as exemplified by a variety of current pro-
ducts and research projects.  It will also describe in detail the
way these problems are addressed in ABC++, IBM's  parallel  class
library product.


Biography:

Dr. Gregory V. Wilson worked at the Edinburgh Parallel  Computing
Centre  from  1986 until 1992, and worked at several universities
before joining IBM Canada earlier this year.  He is the author of
"Practical  Parallel  Programming", an undergraduate introduction
to parallel programming systems published by MIT Press,  and  has
just  finished  editing  a book on C++-based parallel programming
systems, to be published later this year.


Everyone is welcome.  Refreshments served.



DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

SCIENTIFIC COMPUTATION SEMINAR

                    -Wednesday, March 6, 1996

Peter  A.  Forsyth,  Department  of  Computer  Science,
University of Waterloo, will speak on ``Object Oriented
Methods in CFD''.

TIME:                4:00-5:00 p.m.

ROOM:                MC 5158

ABSTRACT

This  talk  will  discuss  the  use  of object oriented
methods  (C++)  in CFD.  Example computations for a C++
implementation  of solution of the compressible Navier-
Stokes   equations   on  unstructured  meshes  will  be
presented.   A  full  Newton approach is used, with the
Jacobian   being  solved  using  a  PCG-like  iterative
method.   Timings will be presented for implementations
of  the  matrix  solution  algorithm  in  both  C++ and
Fortran.   It  is shown that, provided certain language
features  of  C++  are avoided, there is practically no
difference  in  execution time between C++ and Fortran.
An  overview of the advantages and disadvantages of C++
for numerical computation will also be presented.



                    DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
                    UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
                    SEMINAR ACTIVITIES


                    Theory Seminar


                                   - Wednesday, February 28, 1996


                    Jeff   Shallit,   Department   of   Computer   Science,
                    University  of Waterloo will speak on "Automaticity and
                    Rationality".


                    TIME:          3:30 - 4:30 p.m.

                    ROOM:          Davis Centre Room DC1304

                    ABSTRACT

                    In  this  talk  I  will  discuss  some  aspects  of two
                    measures of descriptional complexity:  automaticity and
                    rationality.
                    Let  L,  L'  be  languages.   If  L and L' agree on all
                    strings  of  length  <=  n,  we say L' is an n'th order
                    approximation  to  L.   The  automaticity  of  L  is  a
                    function  A L  (n) which counts the number of states in
                               -
                    any  DFA which accepts some n'th order approximation to
                    L.

                    Rationality  is  a  similar measure, but now instead of
                    using  finite  automata, we use the so-called "rational
                    series" of Schutzenberger and try to approximate L with
                    a rational series of smallest rank.

                    The  talk  will  focus  on  number-theoretic aspects of
                    these measures.

10. Lab Cleanup (until 1:30 or 5 minutes)