Over 200 scientists, developers, and engineers convened from all around the globe for the April 2006 Gelato ICE: Itanium(r) Conference & Expo. The event was organized by the Gelato Federation (http://www.gelato.org), an international user community dedicated to advancing Linux(r) on the Intel(r) Itanium(r) architecture. It was the largest gathering of Linux and Itanium professionals that the world has seen to date with delegates from more than 80 companies and institutions attending. Conference sponsors included HP, Intel, and the Itanium(r) Solutions Alliance, and media sponsors included HPCwire and LinuxHPC.org.

"It was amazing to see the enthusiastic exchange and collaborative spirit among end users, developers, researchers, ISVs, and system vendors during the April conference," stated Mark K. Smith, Gelato managing director. "We believe a strong technical community is going to be the key factor for the overall success of Linux on the Itanium architecture, and Gelato ICE provides a nurturing environment for the community to grow and thrive."

Presentations and Cutting-Edge Projects Showcased

A major goal of the Gelato Federation is education, an area in which the April 2006 Gelato ICE excelled. Focused on areas such as tools and tuning, scalability, enterprise use, and research, the event delivered an exceptional speaker line-up and technical program with over 65 presentations. Highlights were the keynote speeches given by Jerry Huck (HP), Don Soltis and James Reinders (Intel), and Bill Worley (Secure64 and Itanium Solutions Alliance). Other favorites included: decimal floating-point, scaling Linux to 512 processors on SGI(r) Altix(r) servers, and virtualization and vNUMA research at the University of New South Wales. The technical track targeting the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) proved to be the most popular with topics such as introductions to link-time optimization and the LLVM (low level virtual machine) compiler.

In addition to presenting, Gelato members—some of the world's top supercomputing centers, national labs, research centers, and universities—were able to highlight their current Linux and Itanium research during a poster session. Three dozen member institutions presented over 75 projects, denoting a wide range of activities, including: kernel work from the University of New South Wales and the University of Waterloo; grid projects from the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez and the European Organization for Nuclear Research; compiler work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Russian Academy of Sciences; and diverse scientific applications from the University of Chile and the University of Tokyo.

Presentations and posters from the conference can be found at http://www.gelato.org/community/events.php#ICE06apr

Intel(r) Software Development Product Betas Announced

The April 2006 Gelato ICE offered the backdrop for Intel to demonstrate its continued commitment to the Itanium(r) processor by announcing several new beta opportunities: a new parallel programming model, Intel(r) Thread Checker, and Intel(r) VTune(tm) Performance Analyzer for Linux.

"This conference was the perfect occasion to announce the new beta versions of our software products," said James Reinders, director of business development and marketing, Intel Developer Products Division. "Gelato ICE attendees are people and organizations that are passionate about the Itanium(r) processor and the advancement of the architecture. Intel is proud to deliver tools to support the evolving needs of these developers of Itanium applications."

Intel's new parallel programming model is a C++ template-based runtime library that simplifies the process of writing scalable, multi-threaded applications. The beta can be downloaded at: http://www.intel.com/software/products/tbb/beta. Intel(r) Thread Checker, the fastest way for developers to thread an application correctly and unleash its performance on Intel(r) multi-core processors, is also available in beta at: http://www.intel.com/software/products/threading/beta . Intel(r) VTune(tm) Performance Analyzer for Linux* beta makes multithreaded application performance tuning easier with a native GUI and a technology preview of the first memory checker for the Intel Itanium(r) 2 processor. To try VTune(tm) analyzer for Linux, send an email to: vtune_beta@intel.com .

With the tremendous amount of high-quality technical information delivered, exciting new tool announcements, and critical mass of Linux and Itanium experts attending, the April 2006 Gelato ICE was a major success. The next Gelato ICE is planned for October 1-4, 2006, in Singapore, to be hosted by the Bioinformatics Institute, the Institute of High Performance Computing, and the National Grid Office. Stay tuned to http://www.gelato.org/meeting for details.

About Gelato

The Gelato Federation is the global technical community dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel Itanium-based platform through collaboration, education, and leadership. Gelato members are suppliers and users of Linux/Itanium processor technology with a shared goal of producing open-source solutions for academic, government, and industrial high-performance computing users. The Gelato portal (http://www.gelato.org) serves as the primary channel for Federation business and collaborations. Information about Gelato members' software and solutions are available through the portal, and the community is welcome to participate and contribute.

For more information, please contact:
Nan Holda
nan@gelato.org
217.265.0947

Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Silicon Graphics, SGI and Altix are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.