Blogs » Scott Apeland (Intel)

Parallel Programming in Bangalore

Scott Apeland (Intel) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:34:14 +0000

I’m currently on the second leg of grueling plane ride home from Bangalore and reflecting back on the highlight of the trip which was definitely the opportunity to spend time with a few visionaries in India academia - Vice Chancellor H.P. Khincha, Dr. H.S Jamadagni and Dr. K. Rajanikanth. On Saturday, together we inaugurated a new Parallel Programming Center of Excellence at the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore. The center will be used to train 250 faculty from VTU affiliate and autonomous institutes on new parallel programming curriculum. Vice Chan Kincha opened up the event by sharing his vision on keeping abreast of technology and the urgency behind updating curriculum for multi-core. Professor Jamadagni officially handed over a new set of parallel programming curriculum which he developed and is making available to this group and to faculty around the world to use. He noted that unfortunately our brains do not follow Moore’s law - with the number of neurons reducing instead of doubling every two years. So we have to be selective in what we teach students and be careful not to get caught up in the technology hype curve. He also discussed the need for more of a community approach to driving curriculum changes where the teacher, learner, employer, philosopher, politician and researcher all collaborate in its development. Prof. MSRIT, then spoke on how center would be used to train some 300-500 faculty from VTU affiliate and autonomous institutes using a train the trainer approach with master faculty trainers. It was amazing to see the level of enthusiasm and proactiveness around updating curriculum which often can be a quite slow moving machine.

A few photos below of the event. Thank you Vice Chancellor Khincha, Dr. Jamadagni and Dr. Rajanikanth for a strong partnership between academia and industry!

1000 Universities Teaching Parallel Programming

Scott Apeland (Intel) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:17:33 +0000

Congratulations to Jordan University of Science and Technology and Dr. Mazen Kharbutli who became the 1000th University to join the initiative to bring parallel programming to university curriculum. Dr. Kharbutli joins faculty who are actively updating their CS and engineering classes and teaching their students how to think parallel. What I'm particularly excited to see is that it's no longer a focus on just the graduate level courses and instead faculty are now adding parallel programming concepts to undergrad required classes starting at 100 level. Check out the Academic Community to see how this is getting done and to hear about successes and challenges the faculty face in this effort. If you happen to be at the SIGCSE conference this week, stop by the Intel booth and say hello.

Our First Intel® Black Belt Software Developer

Scott Apeland (Intel) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:04:53 +0000

I’m here at the first day of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco and just returned from the Black Belt Awards Ceremony. No this wasn’t a Chuck Norris film festival, it was a reception to honor and award Intel’s first Black Belt Software Developer.

You see it all started to years ago when we sat down with Tim O’Reilly and he explained that if you engaged software developers in a web 2.0 model we could magnify our impact a hundred fold. We followed his advice and haven’t looked back since. Transforming Intel Software Network (ISN) into a community following the 2.0 tenets of transparency, openness, controversy and sharing.

Response from developers has been stunning with users doubling over night and participation growing to over 200 countries. But the most rewarding part of all was to see that developers felt comfortable enough to share their knowledge and help each other solve real problems on ISN.

That’s why today we launched a new program to thank those top contributors to Intel Software Network and awarded our first Black Belt Software Developer title to Igor Levicki. Igor is actually from Serbia and came all the way to SF for the awards ceremony. I met Igor tonight and it was fascinating to hear about his life and work there. He told me he’s enjoying his first trip to the US but can’t wait to get back to his pet dog back home. Igor was selected as a Black Belt due to his technical expertise in parallel programming and performance optimization. His passion was evident as he shared his feedback and ideas on how to make Intel products even better. As a Black Belt he was awarded a new laptop computer, a suite of Intel Software Tools and his own blog on ISN but it seemed he was most interested in having this opportunity to share his ideas and experiences directly with Intel.

Congratulations Igor, I’m looking forward to hearing more of your feedback on how we can make Intel products better. For the rest of you, who’s next? There’s no limit on number of Black Belts, just use your expertise to help others and demonstrate leadership in the ISN communities.

Do Parallel Universes Really Exist?

Scott Apeland (Intel) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:11:22 +0000

Ok, so I'm not an expert on Everett's Many-Worlds Theory but I do know that Many Core is a reality and that every day we're seeing more and more "parallel universities" or universities teaching parallel programming skills. In 2006, the Intel Software College launched a program to bring multicore software tools, threading expertise and courseware to 40 top universities. Since then, more than 400 universities have joined from 45 countries and today we're extending that program by adding a new on-line Academic Community. Why? Well, as we met computer science professors in places like India, Malaysia, United States, Argentina, China, Turkey, etc., they told us they wanted to collaborate and share their ideas and knowledge with each other. This new community will use web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, and forums to connect professors around the world, enabling them to build curriculum together. The community will work hand in hand with Intel's Higher Education Program and also provide a channel to share parallel programming research.

This effort is particularly important to my organization, the Software and Solutions Group, who's charter includes readying the software industry for multicore and many core platforms. Renee James the corporate vice president and general manager of the group has made it clear that doing so is a top priority and something she is committed to: "Preparing the next generation of software developers for parallel programming is challenging and requires new skills and education. Through this on-line community, Intel will contribute training, software tools and expertise but more importantly, academia worldwide can share their knowledge and build curriculum together." said James "This is the real power of web based collaboration."

So if you're interested in parallel universes, many worlds and time travel, you'll need to stay tuned as Moore's Law hasn't quite solved that one yet. However, if you're looking for parallel programming, many core and innovation in higher education, check out http://software.intel.com/en-us/academic/.