The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
October 12, 2007
Dr. Valentina Salapura is a computer architect in the Exploratory Server Systems group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where she is helping to define the next generation of computer systems based on chip multiprocessors and parallel processing. She has studied the use of multiprocessor systems in a range of environments, from automotive applications to network processors and supercomputers.
On October 18 at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, she will be delivering a plenary speech titled Next Generation Supercomputers. We got the opportunity to ask her about her upcoming talk and the significance of the conference to women in the field of computer science.
HPCwire: Tell us about the Grace Hopper Conference and why it is important for women?
Salapura: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is an event to bring together the women in the field and to mentor students and colleagues early in their computer science and engineering careers. Like many science and engineering disciplines, it is very male dominated, and it is easy for somebody starting out to feel lonely, isolated and discouraged.
It's important to build networks for women, to help each other out. I attended a recent talk by Prof. Rosser, the Dean of the Georgia Tech, about challenges women face in science and engineering today, and their unequal position compared to male colleagues. Prof. Rosser found that a woman needs 2.5 times more achievements compared to her male colleagues to reach the same level of recognition. That's why it's so important that we support each other and build our own networks.
Take as an example this year's Turing Award winner. My dear colleague and friend Fran Allen was an early pioneer of parallel programming and she received the Turing Award this year. She was the first woman in history to receive it, after 40 men. Fran was also the first IBM Fellow, and the first female president of the IBM academy, our internal think tank. It's been long overdue that a woman is recognized in this way.
HPCwire: Can you tell us more about women pioneers in the field of computer science?
Salapura: There are not many women in computer science. In addition to Fran Allan, whom I already talked about, two names stand out: Grace Hopper and Anita Borg.
Grace Hopper was another one of the early pioneers of computing field. She was behind the definition of a programming language that powers the systems in many banks and financial systems. The conference is named in her honor. It is now becoming a yearly event, and growing rapidly. Last year the event had over 1,200 attendees.
Another key figure, especially for women in our field, was Anita Borg. Anita Borg was one a few women PhDs in our field when she graduated from NYU. She made important contributions to system design in her early career at various companies. But her impact goes beyond her technical work. She recognized early on the need attract and advance women in technology. Anita Borg founded the Institute for Women and Technology. She died in 2003. Today the institute carries her name and continues the work. The institute is the organizer of the Grace Hopper Conference.
Page: 1 of 3(Digg, Technorati, more)
PGI Accelerator™ Fortran 95/03 and C99 compilers for x64+NVIDIA
Accelerate applications on x64+GPU platforms by adding OpenMP-like compiler directives to existing Fortran and C programs. Available now for Linux, MacOS and Windows. Download a free 15 day trial.
Platform HPC Workgroup Manager
Platform HPC Workgroup Manager integrates all the cluster productivity tools you need to deploy, run and manage your HPC environment.
Mar 19 | OfficialWire | New super to support intelligence work Down Under. Read more...
Mar 18 | ChannelWeb | Westmere parts already showing up in HPC machines. Read more...
Mar 17 | The Register | But what about the tier ones? Read more...
Mar 17 | Cadalyst Magazine | A new generation of workstations is changing the nature of technical computing. Read more...
Mar 17 | Linux Magazine | Latest iteration of Sun Grid Engine able to tap into Cloud. Read more...
Jan 12 | | In-depth look at vSMP Foundation server virtualization technology, technical implementation, use cases and capabilities. The technical whitepaper provides an architectural overview and details on the three vSMP Foundation products: vSMP Foundation for SMP, vSMP Foundation for Cluster and vSMP Foundation for Cloud.
Jan 18 | | This white paper discusses Gore’s copper cable assemblies, and how they continue to exceed the standards for providing reliable, cost-effective solutions for high-performance computer applications.
Join this online panel discussion for live Q&A with leading industry experts, analysts, and end-users to discuss the latest innovations, best practices, barriers to implementation, and measurable benefits of server virtualization with a particular focus on today's real world solutions.
Learn about scalable fault-tolerant architectures and examples of energy efficient and scalable supercomputing clusters using dual QDR InfiniBand to combine capacity computing with network failover capabilities with the help of programming languages such as MPI and a robust Linux cluster management package.
LIVE@SCO9: The IBM team discusses new innovations in hardware, software and services that help clients better understand their workloads and get insight from their R&D efforts. Technology demonstrations include the soon-to-be-released Power7 HPC processor, the DCS990 system with 2.4 petabytes of storage, the xCAT management tool, secure HPC cloud computing and more. Winners of two HPCwire Readers' and Editors’ Choice Awards! Take the IBM virtual tour at SC09 or more information go online to: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/sc09.html