RICERCA ITALIANA     

Science and Applications of Advanced Computational Paradigms

Abstract

Advanced computational paradigms are essential to extend the frontiers of our ability to process information in very many sectors of contemporary society. On this theme, the proposed center aims at promoting research, education, and relations with productive organizations, by integrating and sharing expertise from a number of disciplines with a strong computational component.

Scientifically, the center will pursue a deeper understanding of architectural and algorithmic paradigms from a general computer science perspective and the application of such paradigms to problems arising in astronomy, structural engineering, and experimental physics. Astronomy and structural engineering applications are mostly based on finite-difference and finite-element algorithmic paradigms to solve differential equations, which are most efficiently executed by tightly coupled multiprocessors. The physics applications considered in this proposal are instead motivated by the need of managing huge collections of experimental data: relevant algorithmic paradigms are those typical of data bases, data mining, and information retrieval; the most appropriate architecture appears to be the microprocessor clusters. Particular attention will be devoted to themes that are conceptually unifying across architectural paradigms and across application domains, such as the tradeoffs between general-purpose and special-purpose machines, and the tradeoffs between>>>

Principal Investigator

International Relationship

RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

In the recent past, the units of the proposed center have actively collaborated with many national and foreign research institutions, as listed below.

Astronomy: University of Torino and Roma Tor Vergata; the Observatories of Bologna, Padova and Milano-Merate; SISSA in Trieste; the CINECA supercomputing centre in Bologna; the Max-Planck-Institute in Garching (Germany); the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris (France); the Fermilab in Chicago (USA); the European Southern Observatory in Garching (Germania); the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh (UK); the University of Nottingham (UK); the University of Kansas (USA).

Computer Science: University of Pisa, Roma La Sapienza, Roma Tor Vergata, and Roma III; Istituto di Matematica Computazionale, CNR, Pisa; INFN, Pisa; CINECA, Bologna; Brown University (USA); Cornell University (USA); Oxford University (UK); University of California at Irvine (UK); University of Cork (IR); University of Glashgow (UK); University of Texas A&M (USA); IBM Research (USA); Akamai (USA).

Physics: Many collaborations are active both through the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physiscs (INFN) and through CERN.

Structural Engineering: Politecnico di Milano, Politecnico di Torino, Universita' di Genova, Milano, Palermo, Trieste>>>

Research Objectives

Computing is the process by which some available information is recast into a form more suitable for the intended uses. As such, computing plays a pivotal role in most aspects of the Information Society. In spite of impressive advances in computing technology, spanning almost 10 orders of magnitude in about half a century, there are still many domains where further progress crucially depends on the ability to develop new algorithmic and architectural paradigms to process the relevant information. For example, in 1993, the Committee on Physical, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences of the US Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy has identified a number of ``Compuational Grand Challanges'', which even today are barely approachable by the most powerful computers, featuring a Teraflops of processing power and a Terabyte of storage capacity. These Grand Challanges include: global climate change, human genome, fluid turbolence, vehicle dynamics, ocean circulation, viscous fluid dynamics, superconductor modelling, quanto chromo dynamics, and artificial vision. These domains are of considerable importance for the progess of the basic sciences, as well as for their numerous applications to areas such as engineering and medicine. In more recent years, with the explosion of the Internet, extremely large amounts of data are becoming accessible electronically; a new set of computational challanges is arising from the opportunity to search and identify patterns in>>>