August 1995

International Conference on Parallel Processing

For various reasons (including the ever-shrinking travel budget and the fact that I got back from LCPC 1995 just a day before), I was not expecting to attend ICPP this year... but I believe I've only missed one year since 1984, and 1995 wasn't it. The inspiration for me to drive up this time was a last-minute request that I fill-in for a missing panelist on "SPMD: on a collision course with portability?"

Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to bring along the same two laptops and TTL_PAPERS unit that I had just demoed at LCPC 1995. As in 1994, I was given permission to demo the cluster off to the side during one of the evening parties; this time, it was the cocktail party. Not a very impressive demo; still, after two years at ICPP, people are getting used to the idea that PAPERS isn't a joke. Well, I did hear a few chuckles when people saw that the VAPERS simulator display not only duplicated the PAPERS unit's flashing lights, but also the wood grain....

The next public demonstration of PAPERS at a conference was December 1995 at IEEE/ACM Supercomputing.

The only thing set in stone is our name.