Ashish Patel

Today marked my second involvement in the CASCON event, and the workshop I presented at was quite an interesting one.

The workshop started out with a talk from Hausi Muller, University of Victoria, on the basics of what Autonomic Computing are and how we can and currently leverage this technology. I really loved this part because it gave everyone in the audience the perfect high-level introduction into my technical talk. Hausi focused on applications and services, and extending the idea across other technologies (such as grid computing and web services).

Next, Priyanka Agrawal, a graduate student from University of Victoria, spoke the unspeakable. I actually enjoyed this one because her whole talk was on “Can we trust these systems?”. If you think about it from a personal aspect you wouldn’t actually want to trust a computer to say purchase something for you without you knowing the details (ie. price, color, size), but I think from a technical perspective there is a disconnect between the fact of just fully automating things off the bat. I don’t think people really understand the learning phases that these systems go through to achieve “autonomicity” (if thats a real word).

Next was our presentation. I think we got the message across of how we do things today using manual tools and how these tools operate. More importantly, we showed a demonstration that really got the message across and interested a lot of people. I saw people take pictures during the workshop - if you’re out there email them to me :D.

This coming week is the week of the CASCON 2005 Conference in Markham, Ontario. It’s going to be held at the Sheraton Parkway Hotel (yes that hotel that we 2004 Extreme Bluers stayed at)!

I’ll be presenting a workshop on Tuesday October 18, 2005 on The Engineering of Autonomic Systems. This workshop is comprised of several 30 minute talks. I will be specifically talking about “Using and Extending the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) for Data Collection in Self-Healing Systems”. The abstract for this presentation reads:

This presentation describes how to use and extend the logging and monitoring tooling in the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) for data collection in self-healing systems. TPTP is used to generate, collect and consolidate log, trace, statistical data from distributed applications necessary for self-healing systems. The presentation begins by exploring the motivation and history of the TPTP project. Next, an explanation of TPTP’s architecture will be provided with focus on the project’s extensibility and data collection components. Finally, a demonstration will illustrate the collection of log and statistical data from a sample distributed two-tier application in real-time.

During the workshop, we’ll be doing a demonstration of the current commercial release of the IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit (IPOT).

So what is CASCON all about?

CASCON 2005, the 15th annual international conference hosted by the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, is the premiere computer science and software engineering conference in Canada. CASCON is an excellent venue for exchanging ideas, showcasing results, experiences and tools, and networking with researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government. The Meeting of Minds, as CASCON is otherwise known, is an opportunity to present, discuss, and learn.

CASCON 2005 comprises keynote presentations, technical paper tracks, Frontiers of Software Practice track, challenging workshops, Best Paper and Best Student Paper Awards, and a Technology Showcase, which is a key attraction of the conference. CASCON always aims to innovate. As well, the proceedings from CASCON 2005, as most of those from past CASCONs, will be included in the ACM Digital Library, a “window into the world’s core computing literature.” We invite you to participate in CASCON 2005 to help us build an exciting forum for exchanging ideas and experiences in these ever expanding and critical fields of software and computing.

Last year, I held a technology showcase called Symbiosis. This project ultimately fueled the development of what is now known as the IBM Performance Optimization Toolkit (IPOT). From the CASCON 2004 archives, the following is the abstract for the Symbiosis project:

Symbiosis is research project aimed at creating a collection infrastructure for sharing data between run-time monitoring systems and developer run-time analysis tools. The intent of this project is to provide a problem determination tool that helps to complete the software life cycle by bridging the gap between the developer, the tester, and the system administrator in any typical software development organization.

If your in town, and if your registered ;), come check it out!

Its been official for a while now, IBM is releasing a few podcasts every month to its customers and investors to collaborate with the public on their ideas of the future and how the company is doing. I think its a great idea for a company to do this for the very reason of collaboration. Not many companies do that well or are even afraid of doing so.

So far, my favourite podcast is the one called “IBM and the Future of our Past”, which is apart of a series of podcasts called “IBM and the Future of…” . This podcast talks about the Genographic Project, which is a five-year study conducted by IBM and the National Geographic Society. The project is about the collection of thousands of DNA samples that helped to put together a map of how humans migrated from Africa to the rest of the world.

What’s IBM’s stance on podcasts?

Podcasting “is extremely portable and accessible, and can convey information in a way that’s easier to absorb than in a lengthy document,” said John Bukovinsky, an IBM spokesperson. “This follows a pattern of trying to give investors insight into the company by looking at what we think is a strength, which is our ability to understand diverse industry segments.”

Going Public

IBM won’t release podcasts on a fixed schedule, but it expects to post another ten or so before the end of the year, Bukovinsky said. Planned topics include IBM’s takes on the future of shopping, health care, banking and the home.

“We’ll cover a variety of subjects,” Bukovinsky said. “They’ll be a look ahead at where we see a convergence of business issues and technology solutions.”

There are many more podcasts so check them out!

There have so many great inventions in the world, especially in the computing industry. IBM Research has produced a lot of inventions, widgets and gadgets that have changed the industry as a whole over the last half-century. Today marks 60 years of IBM Research’s existence.

Credit goes to C|NET news for publishing an elaborate article about IBM Research over the last 60 years, where they state:

Five IBM employees have won Nobel Prizes for, among other achievements, the discovery of electron tunneling and the invention of a microscope that captures images of individual atoms. Add to that seven National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and four A.M. Turing Awards.

IBM inventions and discoveries include the programming language Fortran (1957), magnetic storage (1955), the relational database (1970), DRAM (dynamic random access memory) cells (1962), the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) chip architecture (1980), fractals (1967), superconductivity (1987) and the Data Encryption Standard (1974). In the last 12 years, IBM has received 29,021 patents–more than any other company or individual in the world.

Its very interesting to take a look at some of the patents and inventions that are out there in the world. Within IBM you find some of the most cutting-edge inventions. In other companies, like Coca-Cola, you find they don’t even have patents on their forumla. From a business aspect, its interesting to see how people and businesses capitalize on their inventions. IBM has done a great job in evolving the industry with their inventions, just as many other computer giants in the world today.

It has been about 2 weeks since I joined the World Community Grid program and have been contributing over 15 hours of my computing resources a day to help the Human Proteome Project.

World Community Grid’s mission is to create the world’s largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.

When idle, your computer will request data on a specific project from World Community Grid’s server. It will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research!

So why did I decide to participate? Well I realized that my dual Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHZ workstation isn’t always being utilized to its maximum potential. I ran a program that evaluates the capbility of your computer (from the aspect of computing horsepower, disk space, memory, etc) to benchmarks. Apparently mine rated 183 as compared to 100 (which is a high-end workstation).

The thing is that as you volunteer your computing resources you get points for every protien that you process. I have collected over 12K points.

I suggest that if you have unused computing power, please lend it to the greater good of mankind! To start, you download and install a small program or “agent” onto your computer.