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Design/Author: Larry Picha
Authorizing Official: Ian Foster, Program Chair
Last Revised: 17 JUNE 96 (ldp)

The five day workshop will conduct a detailed examination and evaluation of the systems software concepts and techniques required to meet the requirements of proposed petaflops applications and architectures. A major driver for these meetings will be the results of the Petaflops Architecture Workshop (PAWS'96) and input from participants in NSF-sponsored point-design studies of very high performance systems. A small group of experts in key aspects of high performance and scalable programming models, libraries, and system software, architecture, and applications will be convened to investigate these issues. The workshop will include the following activities:

• A review of the findings of PAWS'96 and subsequent developments within the NSF sponsored point-design studies, with the goal of further elucidating application and architecture characteristics.
• Intense working group discussions intended to identify both an expected mainstream development path and novel alternatives in the areas of programming models, scalable libraries, and systems software.
• A critical review of the proposed candidate approaches in each area, with respect to the point-design study architectures and applications.
• Documentation of the findings, open issues, and recommendations of the workshop. A preliminary report and set of recommendations will be released quickly, followed by a more substantial report integrating both PAWS'96 material and the reports from the point design studies.