Computer and Information Technology Institute at Rice

Rice researchers present work at Supercomputing 2004
“Bridging Communities” was the theme for Supercomputing 2004, the annual high performance computing, networking, and storage conference in Pittsburgh during the week of November 8, 2004. CITI represented Rice at the conference, highlighting its tradition of supporting broad-based collaboration and community building since 1986. This was the third year CITI represented Rice faculty and students with a booth at this conference. The Rice booth (see photos below) featured a large cross-section of computational research at Rice, ranging from computer science to bioinformatics and the Bio-X focus of the Gulf Coast Consortium, our centers and industrial partnerships.
Although industry represented the majority of the exhibits at the conference (about 180 companies occupy the majority of the square footage), Rice was among about 110 research institutions from around the world represented on the floor. Of those, about 30 were U.S. academic institutions and/or major NSF centers. Including national labs, more than 50% were from the U.S. Every institution on the floor featured cutting edge research in computational science and engineering and computer science.
This year, CITI hosted six talks, displayed eight posters, and distributed fliers from a large number of the research projects led by CITI faculty. “This is a truly unique conference and being on the floor with a research booth creates tremendous visibility for Rice,” said Jan Odegard, the Executive Director of CITI. “In the three days that the exhibit floor is open, we make more contacts and strengthen or build new relationships that otherwise could take months to develop.”
In addition to static displays and research literature, the CITI booth included an area for giving short presentations to small groups. The presentations, The Virtual Grid Application Development Software (VGrADS) project, HPCToolkit: Multi-platform tools for profile-based performance analysis, and Fault tolerant computing with MPI., were given by Rice faculty, research scientists, and students.

The Rice/CITI booth at Supercomputing 2004 showcased Rice research and hosted visitors while showcasing high performance computing and computational science and engineering research.

Ken Kennedy presented his research program "The Virtual Grid Application Development Software (VGrADS)," and with the support of his graduate student, Anirban Mandel, demonstrated the EMAN application using the “Houston BioGrid,” a joint effort between Rice, the University of Houston and Baylor College of Medicine. The hardware used for this demo was 64 dual node Intel Itanium at Rice University, and 60 dual node Intel Itanium and 16 dual node AMD Opteron at the University of Houston.

John Mellor-Crummey presented his research and development project “HPCToolkit: Multi-platform tools for profile-based performance analysis.” This project was also the core for a well-received full-day SC 2004 tutorial session given by John and Rob Fowler. The session drew more than 50 attendees.

The Rice booth had a steady flow of visitors, giving everyone opportunities to talk about their research projects and represent Rice at this premier conference for supercomputing.


The Rice/CITI booth at Supercomputing 2004 showcased Rice research and hosted visitors while showcasing high performance computing and computational science and engineering research.


John Mellor-Crummey presented his research and development project “HPCToolkit: Multi-platform tools for profile-based performance analysis.” This project was also the core for a well-received full-day SC 2004 tutorial session given by John and Rob Fowler. The session drew more than 50 attendees.


The Rice booth had a steady flow of visitors, giving everyone opportunities to talk about their research projects and represent Rice at this premier conference for supercomputing.