Creator of Gustafson's law to keynote Multicore conference

Gordon Bell Prize inaugural winner and creator of Gustafson's law to keynote Multicore conference and reveal never before presented “Ubox Method”

Auckland, February 17th, 2014 - New Zealand will be the first audience in the globe to hear “A New Kind of Parallelism: The Ubox Method” about how to make parallel programming work easily.

The keynote speaker at Multicore World 2014 Conference, Dr. John Gustafson is a 36-year veteran of the computing industry. An applied physicist and mathematician who has worked at AMD, Intel, Sun Microsystems and various start-ups -as Director, CTO and CEO, Gustafson will outline why it is time to overthrow a century of numerical analysis.

The conference takes place in Auckland on February 25 & 26.

Gustafson says current computing methods are based on acceptance of rounding errors and sampling errors using numerical representations that were invented in 1914, and with algorithms designed for a time when transistors were expensive.

Multicore World 2014 organiser Nicolas Erdody says anyone that has anything to do with IT should make a beeline to listen to Gustafson.

“This is leading edge knowledge that will change peoples’ concepts of what is possible with multicore and parallel programming,” says Erdody.

Gustafson gives an example of something he believes will really startle people who understand computing.

“Imagine doing a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) with time stepping, like the exact equation of a pendulum swinging,” he says.

“You get rounding error as you march through the time steps, and sampling error since you have to approximate variable acceleration and velocity with constants, but worst of all, you HAVE to perform the calculation sequentially".

"With my new method, you turn the problem sideways and compute the time spent in each region of space, since velocity and acceleration are functions of spatial position. Time is a function of position, instead of the other way around. Guess what that lets you do? Compute all the behaviour in parallel! I can solve a nonlinear ODE with a rigorous bound, no rounding error, no sampling error, and DO IT WITH A MILLION PROCESSORS for more speed and accuracy, if I have that many.”

Gustafson is one of 20 speakers at Multicore World 2014, a majority of who are from overseas says Nicolas Erdody.

“As a collective New Zealand, we have the opportunity to learn more about programming for multicore computers, its wider applications, and create a centre of excellence in such coding,” he says.

“Those attending the conference at Auckland's AUT university will have a clear idea of where their IT efforts should be concentrated, who they should collaborate with, and why it matters".

ENDS

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