We are planning a BLAS Technical Forum meeting on November 7-8. The meeting will be hosted Michael Heroux and the meeting will be held at Cray Research's facility in Eagan, MN:
The Forum has been established to consider expanding the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) in a number of directions in the light of modern software, language, and hardware developments. The first meeting of the Forum was held in Nashville on February 19-20, 1996 and the next meeting was in Atlanta on May 20-21, 1996.
Working groups have been established to consider the overall functionality, a lightweight interface, and an object based interface, for the BLAS. Other subgroups have also been established, either to advise the current working groups or as placeholders for future working groups on parallel processing issues, sparse operations, data structures, extensions to the existing BLAS and language binding issues.
We strongly urge and encourage attendance at the meeting so that we can make tangible progress towards much needed standards. Wide input is needed to help ensure that emerging proposals are useful and acceptable to the community.
It is appreciated that it is not easy for everyone to attend the meetings of the Forum, but we would nevertheless welcome your input since we wish the discussion to be as open as possible, and the results to reflect consensus from the community at large. for the parallel and sequential settings, as well as standards for basic matrix data structures, both dense and sparse.
| Thursday November 7 | |
|---|---|
| Cray Research's facility in Eagan, MN | |
| 12:00 noon: | Lunch at Cray Research |
| 1:00 pm: | Registration |
| Introduction | |
| Functionality | |
| Lite | |
| Parallel | |
| Sparse | |
| Extensions to existing | |
| Language binding issues | |
| 6:00 pm: | Dinner |
| Friday November 8 | |
| Cray Research's facility in Eagan, MN | |
| 9:00 am: | Vendor comments and requirements |
| Applications comments and requirements | |
| Users comments and requirements | |
| 12:00 noon: | Lunch |
| Continued discussions | |
| Summary and Wrap-up | |
| 4:00 pm: | End of meeting |
If you would like to handout reports or documents during the workshop, please bring the material with you. We will not be able to reproduce large volumes of material.
We estimate an attendance of 40 persons at the maximum.
Here is a working note for the BLAS Functionality BLAS Functionality Proposal
We have reserved blocks of rooms for November 6 and 7 at the following hotels. Shuttle service to Cray Park is available from both hotels.
Rate is $79/night with the option to stay November 8 and 9 at the weekend rate of $129. Reservations must be made by October 21st.
Rate is $62/night with the option to stay November 8 and 9 at the same rate of $62. Reservations must be made by October 15th.
Map of Cray Research Park and surrounding area: Click here
Map of Airport and Directions to Cray Research Park: Click here
Attendees should park near the Software Training Building (see Cray Research Park map) and enter Building A.
Please let me know if you are planning to attend.
Discussion documents and the minutes of the Nashville and Atlanta meetings are available from the BLAST Forum homepage: past information. together with information from a preliminary workshop that was held in Knoxville in November, 95. There are also email discussion lists as follows:
For background information see: background
For a preliminary set of forum rules for discussion see: rules
Jack Dongarra, Sven Hammarling, and Michael Heroux
