Benchmarking And Designing For Energy Efficiency: How To Break A World Record In 30 Days
Mehul A. Shah, Hewlett-Packard
10/15/2009
Energy efficiency is a key concern in contexts ranging from large-scale data centers to mobile devices. This talk discusses our work on benchmarking and designing data-intensive systems for energy efficiency. After mentioning the pitfalls surrounding the creation of JouleSort, a whole-system, energy-based benchmark, the talk will describe the 100GB JouleSort system that can sort 11,300 records for a Joule --- the 2007 world record. Also discussed will be the results and insights from measuring the efficiency of a variety of systems from desktops to embedded devices. Going beyond JouleSort, there are preliminary results characterizing the efficiency of audit-class TPC-H systems, which suggest that in the future software optimizations will play an important role in reducing energy-use. It is to be hoped that the audience will be armed with the tools and know-how to break an energy-efficiency world record in fewer than 30 days.
Recursion Without Fear
V. Scott Gordon, California State University, Sacramento
10/22/2009
Do you live in mortal terror of recursion? Does the mere sound of the dreaded "R" word induce panic or run chills up and down your spine? Well, fear no more, you can understand recursion and use it with confidence. Whereas most books explain recursion using mathematical examples, or by describing how it is implemented, this unique lecture will instead show you how to visualize what recursion does when you put it in your code. You will also see recursion perform three magic tricks that will amaze your friends, and simplify your code. Add recursion to your bag of tricks!
When Your Coworkers Might Be Virtual
David Singer, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose
10/29/2009
With the continued movement of work around the world, and with the pressures for reduced travel, it's easy to find yourself interacting with co-workers who are only represented by electronic simulacra (voice, text, video, or avatars). What does this mean to human interaction, to trust, and to effective collaboration.
Generative Storytelling For Games
Jason Shankel, Stupid Fun Club
11/05/2009
Production costs for computer games have risen almost as quickly as consumer demand for content. Increases in computer power and storage capacity, as well as improvements in the quality of text-to-speech systems, offer opportunities to generate rich stories automatically. In this talk, I will present methods and technologies for producing computer-generated characters and plot arcs for use in interactive games. Pizza after talk
If You Know Oracle, You Know Db2 9.7
Eugenia Caldwell, IBM Innovation Center, San Mateo
11/12/2009
Most computer science students learn Oracle, rather than DB2. But many large institutions (banks, insurance companies, credit card issuers, manufacturers, retailers) have established DB2 as their standard. You have an edge in the job market if you understand DB2 in addition to Oracle. Now, with the DB2 9.7 Oracle Compatibility features, if you know Oracle, you can use and program a DB2 database. You can also take advantage of the many outstanding, unique features of this newest DB2 release, including self-tuning memory, automatic storage, easy high availability, the best compression in the industry, pure XML storage, database changes without downtime, and lower costs, which is one big reason why those large institutions love DB2.