An important update from the REANNZ Video Conferencing Service team

We're getting in touch to let you know that we're doing an upgrade to our software.  To continue using our service after this upgrade, you'll need to upgrade your desktop Scopia client software.

What do you need to do?

1. The upgrade is happening on Saturday 29 March from 9am to 6pm - so, you'll need to upgrade your client after this and before you next join a VC meeting.
2. To make the change - please go to http://sds.karen.net.nz and click on the link "click here to install these updates" and follow the simple instructions.
   Mac users - you'll only be offered one option to download the "Scopia Desktop Client", so that's nice and easy.
   PC users - you'll see that you have three check boxes - please select the "Conference Client/" option.
   Mobile and VC room users - no need to make any changes, you won't be impacted by this upgrade.
3. Tip: After you've downloaded the new software - it's always best to test it and make sure it's all working ok. Remember, we have a test room that you can use. Just go to http://sds.karen.net.nz, type your username in, then "6222" into the meeting ID and click the "Participate Now" button.
4. Please pass this on! We've contacted everyone in our community with an iview account (that's people who are able to set up VC meetings). If you know other people that use this VC service but don't set up meetings like you, please let them know that they also need to upgrade their client.

If you're having any issues or if you're unsure if this change affects you, please contact your organisation's video conferencing or desktop support. Of course, if you're not sure who helps within your organisation - please reply to this email and we'll point you in the right direction.

Thanks!
Biju,
REANNZ Help Desk Support

The following packages have been updated to the latest version (October 2013):

• xlf 11.1
• xlc 9.0
• XL MASS and SMP libraries

Prof. Andrzej Bargiela, an Erskine visitor to UC, is teaching a short course on concepts of concurrent programming that students are invited to attend.  This short course will provide some important theoretical background for anyone interested in parallel algorithms and programming:

Lectures on Concurrent Computing
Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering
Lecturer: Prof. Andrzej Bargiela, University of Nottingham, UK
Visiting Erskine Fellow (Feb.-May 2014)

The general objective of this short course on Concurrent Computing will
be to link the mathematical specification of algorithms, that may
benefit from concurrent execution, with the necessary consideration of
the correctness of the implementation of such algorithms. First four
lectures will be given within COSC413 but additional participants are
welcome.

Lecture 1:                  1.00pm-2pm, Wednesday, 26 March 2014, room
Erskine 315

Concurrent computing abstraction:

introduction of a formalism that enables reasoning about correctness of
concurrent programs; atomic instructions, interleaving and proofs by
mathematical induction

Lecture 2:                  2.00pm-3pm, Wednesday, 26 March 2014, room
Erskine 315

Mutual exclusion problem:

discusion of the interdependence of concurrent programs and the various
attempts to ensure correct execution of such programs using the most
basic computer functionality that of memory interlock

Lecture 3:                  1.00pm-2pm, Wednesday, 2 April  2014, room
Erskine 315

Fine-grained atomic operations - semaphore synchronization:

refinement of synchronization of concurrent processes by building
complex instructions

Lecture 4:                  2.00pm-3pm, Wednesday, 2 April 2014, room
Erskine 315

Coarse-grained atomic operations – monitor synchronization:

refinement of synchronization of concurrent processes by building
abstract data types

Optional tutorials/practicals

Students will be offered an opportunity to undertake a project using an
emulator of the ADA language. This provides an environment for empirical
validation of the correctness of implementation of concurrent programs
as well as facilitating an easy introduction to ADA programming.

Additional Lectures           at the beginning of May, the date(s) and
room: TBA

The objective will be to expand on the formal proof of correctness in
the context of distributed computing environments.

Lecture 5: 

ADA rendezvous for distributed synchronization:

synchronization of concurrent processes executing on distributed
hardware; a-symmetrical communication-based synchronization with a
privileged process

Lecture 6: 

Distributed mutual exclusion:

synchronization of concurrent processes executing on distributed
hardware; symmetrical communication-based synchronization with all
processes being equal

Lecturer profile:

Andrzej Bargiela (www.bargiela.com) is Professor of Computer Science
working at the University of Nottingham, UK. His external appointments
included Visiting Professorships at the University of Alberta, Canada,
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, Tokyo Institute of
Technology, Japan, University of Bari, Italy and Krakow Technical
University, Poland.

His research falls under the general heading of Computational
Intelligence and involves study of representation of information and
uncertainty, mathematical foundations of Granular Computing, information
abstraction, human-centred information processing, fuzzy logic,
parallel, distributed and neural computation and modeling and
optimization of systems with structural and information uncertainty.

He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and
Cybernetics, (Systems) and Associated Editor of Information Sciences. He
served as President of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation
and serves/served as reviewer for research funding bodies in UK,
Germany, Italy and Poland.

A maintenance day is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9th.  All BlueFern systems are likely to be affected as various machines are shut down and restarted. Although the systems may be functioning correctly for brief periods, you are advised not to run any HPC jobs unless you're prepared for them to be halted suddenly.

Update 9/4/14:  Todays maintenance is now finished.  All systems should be operating normally.