The computing environment of tomorrow will not be anything like the stand-alone environment of yesterday. Computing infrastructure is changing drastically, presenting unique opportunities as well as challenges for applications and application scientists. Despite the rapid onset of distributed infrastructure, the majority of scientists still use the same programming methods that they are accustomed to using on isolated computers. On the other hand, the underlying infrastructure does not support seamless extensibility or scaling of applications from desktops to distributed heterogenous resources. An important feature of this theme will be its focus on applications, and thus a consequent "top-down" approach to distributed programming abstractions. In particular, this Theme will examine how scientific applications can be programmed such that they can easily utilise distributed infrastructure, and how computer scientists can help design and implement applications that are shielded from future trends and changes in computing environments. The Theme aims to address these issues by focusing, amongst many others, on the following questions: What are the main barriers to wide-spread distributed High Performance Computing applications? Is there a level at which simple yet powerful programming abstractions can be effective in distributed environments?
Over the course of this theme, there will be a series of correlated workshops and meetings to explore many of these issues. In addition to surveying the status of the field and addressing the high level questions, this theme aims to spawn focussed research groups that will examine in greater detail some of the specific ideas.
Lecture 1
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