WoTUG - The place for concurrent processes

Communicating Process Architectures - 2002

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Sunday 15th. September (evening) through Wednesday 18th. September (lunchtime) 

The University of Reading (England) 

In association with:
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The British Computer Society
and
The Institution of Electrical Engineers

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Conference Themes and Goal

Communicating Process Architectures addresses many of the key issues in modern computer science and practice. In broad terms, the conference themes will concern concurrency - at all levels of software and hardware granularity. The goal of the conference is to stimulate discussion and ideas as to the role concurrency will play in the future generation of scalable computer infrastructure and applications - where scaling means the ability to ramp up functionality (i.e. stay in control as complexity increases) as well as physical metrics (such as performance). 

Traditionally, concurrency has been taught and considered and experienced as an advanced and difficult topic. The thesis underlying this conference is that this tradition is wrong. The natural world operates through the continuous interaction of massive numbers of autonomous agents at all levels of granularity (astronomic, human, sub-atomic). If modern computer science finds concurrency hard, then it is probably not doing it right! It is time for concurrency to mature into a simple discipline that can be used everyday to simplify the way in which we do computing, as well as enhance the performance of what we build.

Specific themes include, but are not limited to: 

  • theory - getting the underlying model right (CSP, pi-calculus, channels, monitors, semaphores, BSP, barriers, buckets...);
  • concurrent design patterns and tools (built upon the above);
  • safety and security issues (race-hazards, deadlock, livelock, process starvation, ...);
  • language issues (Java(TM), CSP libraries for Java/C/C++, occam(TM), Handel-C(TM), ...);
  • system issues (lightweight multithreading kernels, lightweight external communications/interrupts, ...)
  • processor issues (instruction sets for zero-cost multithreading, VLIW, multiprocessor chips, software cache control, ...)
  • specialised hardware issues (link and router technologies, FPGAs, ...);
  • shared-memory -v- message-passing paradigms (unification?), SMP and virtual SMP architectures;
  • supercomputing from commodity components (cluster computing, internet grids, ...);
  • applications: scientific (including graphics and GUIs), engineering (including embedded, real-time and safety-critical), business (including mobile and e-commerce) and home (including entertainment);
  • global architectural issues (vertical integration of all the above);
  • etc.

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Conference Structure and Call for Participants

The 22 accepted papers will be presented in a single stream during the day, with (unplanned) fringe sessions and/or (planned) tutorials in the evenings. One session will include a meeting of the BCS Parallel Processing Specialist Group. Normal sessions will not concentrate on particular themes - except that closely related presentations will be kept together. The aim is to create a workshop athmosphere with all participants engaging in as much as possible, especially in talks that may appear to be outside their immediate interests.

Submitted papers have been refereed by the Programme Committee. The conference proceedings will be published by IOS Press as part of their Concurrent Systems Engineering series. Selected papers will be invited for further development and submission to a (CPA) Special Edition of the IEE Proceedings - Software, for journal publication in Spring 2003. New!

This conference is our Jubilee - the 25th. in the series of WoTUG conferences! They have consistently proven to be a valuable meeting place for all those interested in the problems and opportunities thrown up by parallel computing and concurrency. The delegates and speakers reflect a wide spectrum of disciplines - theoreticians, software engineers, hardware engineers, tool builders and applications specialists - and we meet in a relaxed, exciting, friendly and highly productive atmosphere ... often till very late the next morning! All are very welcome.

Registration Fees

The registration fee is £330.00 sterling (no VAT chargeable). This includes: 
  • accommodation for the nights of the 15, 16, 17 September 2002;
  • all meals, starting with the evening meal on Sunday night, through to Wednesday lunch;
  • conference dinner;
  • one copy of the conference proceedings.
Please follow this link to register
 

Proceedings on CD-ROMNew!

Starting this year, the accepted papers will be made available in the published proceedings and on a conference CD-ROM. The conference CD will be available at CPA 2002 and from the wotug website thereafter.
 
Submission of full papers Monday 10 June 2002
Tutorial / workshop proposals Monday 10 June 2002
Notification of acceptance Monday 8 July 2002
Submission of camera-ready copy Monday 22 July 2002

Student Bursaries

WoTUG is sponsoring a limited number of Student Bursaries, worth £100 sterling. To qualify, you must be registered as a student at a Higher Education institution, not in receipt of a salary and obtain a supporting letter from your academic supervisor. Please fax this to James Pascoe before you register - you will be given a reference number to quote on your registration form.  The bursaries will be awarded in FIFO scheduling to qualifying applicants until they run out. 

Conference Chairs

James Pascoe and Roger Loader
Department of Computer Science 
The University of Reading 
Whiteknights 
Reading 
RG1 5JL 
UK 
Tel: +44-118-9875123 ext. 7626 
Fax: +44-118-9751994 
Email: cpa2002@wotug.org
Vaidy Sunderam
Department of Math & Computer Science 
Emory University 
Atlanta, GA 
USA 
Tel: +1-404-727-7580 

Programme Committee

  • Professor Peter Welch, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. (WoTUG Chair)
  • Dr. Alastair Allen, University of Aberdeen, UK.
  • Professor Hamid Arabnia, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
  • Richard Beton, Roke Manor Research Ltd., UK.
  • Professor Jan F. Broenink, University of Twente, The Netherlands
  • Dr. Alan Chalmers, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Professor Peter Clayton, Rhodes University, South Africa.
  • Dr. Barry Cook, 4Links Ltd., UK.
  • Ruth A. Ivimey-Cook, ARM Ltd., Cambridge, UK.
  • Christopher Jones, British Aerospace, Warton Aerodrome, UK.
  • Professor Jon Kerridge, Napier University, UK.
  • Dr. Tom Lake, InterGlossa, UK.
  • Dr. Adrian E. Lawrence, Loughborough University, UK.
  • Dr. Roger J. Loader, The University of Reading, UK.
  • Professor David May FRS, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Stephen Maudsley, Esgem Ltd, UK.
  • Dr. Majid Mirmehdi, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Dr. Henk Muller, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Professor Chris Nevison, Colgate University, New York, USA.
  • Professor Patrick Nixon, University of Strathclyde, UK.
  • Dr. Brian O'Neill, Nottingham Trent University, UK.
  • James Pascoe, The University of Reading, UK.
  • Dr. Roger Peel, University of Surrey, UK.
  • Professor Nan Schaller, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA.
  • Professor G. S. Stiles, Utah State University, Utah, USA.
  • Professor V. S. Sunderam, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
  • Øyvind Teig, Kongsberg Maritime Ship Systems, Trondheim, (KMSS), Norway.
  • Professor Rod Tosten, Gettysburg University, USA.
  • Dr. Stephen J Turner, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
  • Professor Paul Tymann, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA.
  • Paul Walker, 4Links Ltd, UK.
  • Dr. Hugh Webber, QuinetiQ, Malvern, UK.
  • Professor Jim Woodcock, University of Kent at Cantebury, UK.

Published Proceedings

The Proceedings will be published by IOS Press, Netherlands as part of the Concurrent Systems Engineering Series (ISSN 1383-7575).

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Page last modified on 14th January 2002
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