From cnovak at tti-c.org Thu Jun 5 10:44:58 2008 From: cnovak at tti-c.org (Christina Novak) Date: Thu Jun 5 11:45:19 2008 Subject: [TTIC Colloquium] TTI-C Distinguished Lecture Series JUNE 12- Simon Peyton Jones (Microsoft Research- Cambridge) Message-ID: <003301c8c723$1e847880$a9bf8780@cnovakHBRQFD1> Good morning, The Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago would like to invite you to our 2008 Distinguished Lecture Series on the University of Chicago Campus. Our third and final speaker in the series will be Simon Peyton Jones. (Details, see http://tti-c.org/dls) The lecture will be held at 3:30pm Biological Sciences Learning Center (room 115- 1st floor) 924 East 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637 Thursday, June 12th, 2008 "Exploiting Multicores with Nested Data Parallelism in Haskell" Simon Peyton Jones Microsoft Research- Cambridge http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj ABSTRACT: The web has made a widely-hailed transition from its original incarnation to a putative state of "Web 2.0". This transition has stemmed from the clever use of AJAX and efficient grid computing to enhance a user's perception of responsiveness and interaction. In the process, the web experience has changed from a human interacting with a browser, to the emergence of a plethora of social media experiences. One consequence is that moving beyond the current notion of Web 2.0 demands research advances that straddle the boundaries between computational and social sciences, the latter including microeconomics, cognitive psychology and sociology. It also raises difficult questions on the use of data - ranging from the algorithmic to the societal. This lecture will attempt to chart this interdisciplinary research agenda, arguing that the most influential research will require heavy interaction between these "hard" and "soft" sciences. We look forward to seeing you at the lecture. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://ttic.uchicago.edu/pipermail/colloquium/attachments/20080605/32d613f5/attachment.htm From cnovak at tti-c.org Thu Jun 5 11:28:22 2008 From: cnovak at tti-c.org (Christina Novak) Date: Thu Jun 5 12:33:10 2008 Subject: [TTIC Colloquium] Updated abstract for: JUNE 12- Simon Peyton Jones (Microsoft Research- Cambridge) Message-ID: <005e01c8c729$2ebe5030$a9bf8780@cnovakHBRQFD1> Beg your pardon. Below is the correct abstract. Thank you! The Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago would like to invite you to our 2008 Distinguished Lecture Series on the University of Chicago Campus. Our third and final speaker in the series will be Simon Peyton Jones. (Details, see http://tti-c.org/dls) The lecture will be held at 3:30pm Biological Sciences Learning Center (room 115- 1st floor) 924 East 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637 Thursday, June 12th, 2008 "Exploiting Multicores with Nested Data Parallelism in Haskell" Simon Peyton Jones Microsoft Research- Cambridge http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj ABSTRACT: There are many approaches to exploiting multi-cores, but a particularly promising one is the "data-parallel" paradigm, because it combines massive parallelism (on both shared and distributed memory) with a simple, single-control-flow programming model. Indeed, I think that data parallelism is the only way we will be able to exploit tens or hundreds of processors effectively. Alas, data-parallel programming is usually restricted to "flat" data parallelism, which is good for implementers but bad for programmers. Instead, I'll describe the "nested" data parallel programming model, first developed in the 90's by Blelloch and Sabot. It is great for programmers but much harder to implement; as a result, it's virtually unknown in practice. It's really only feasible to support nested data parallelism in a purely functional language, so we are building a high-performance implementation in Haskell. In this talk I'll explain what nested data parallelism is, why it's important, and what progress we have made. Fear not: I won't assume you know any Haskell. Yet. We look forward to seeing you at the lecture. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://ttic.uchicago.edu/pipermail/colloquium/attachments/20080605/c2d1712e/attachment.htm From macglashan at tti-c.org Mon Jun 30 10:26:36 2008 From: macglashan at tti-c.org (Julia MacGlashan) Date: Mon Jun 30 11:21:46 2008 Subject: [TTIC Colloquium] Kristoffer Hansen, University of Aarhus: TTI-C Talk Message-ID: <000301c8dac5$b19c4480$aabf8780@jmacglDPLFYD1> When: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 @ 2:00 pm Theory Seminar Where: TTI-C Conference Room 1427 E. 60th St, 2nd Floor Who: Kristoffer Hansen, University of Aarhus Topic: Constant Width Characterizations of Small Depth Circuit Classes Barrington's Theorem showed that constant width branching programs or equivalently, constant width circuits are surprisingly powerful. They compute exactly the functions computed by AND/OR circuits of constant fanin and of logarithmic depth, i.e NC^1. At the heart of this result is an algebraic construction, showing that the word problem for any finite unsolvable monoid is complete for NC^1. Shortly after Barrington's result Barrington and Th?rien gave characterizations for the constant depth circuit classes AC^0 and ACC^0 within the same algebraic framework of finite monoids, by using aperiodic and solvable monoids, respectively. In this talk we will survey recent results providing characterizations of AC^0 and ACC^0 by imposing certain topological constraints (for instance planarity) on constant width branching programs and circuits. Contact: Prahladh Harsha, TTI-C prahladh@tti-c.org 773-834-2549 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://ttic.uchicago.edu/pipermail/colloquium/attachments/20080630/ffcc3c32/attachment-0001.htm