From: Peter Beckman <beckman@acl.lanl.gov>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 10:59:03 -0700
To: beowulf@beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov, extreme-linux@acl.lanl.gov
Subject: Call For Papers:  Extreme Linux Workshop

Extreme Linux Workshop/Conference #3

   Last year, at the Extreme Linux Workshop #2
   (www.extremelinux.org/activities/usenix99), which was held as a
   special workshop track at the annual USENIX conference, we had to
   turn away attendees when we reached our room capacity.  This year
   we are expanding from being a workshop to being a full track at the
   newly expanded Linux Showcase & Conference.  We hope to provide a
   forum for the publication of rigourous research aimed at enabling
   more powerful, more useable, more scalable, more Extreme Linux
   clusters.  We will also continue to have talks about current
   clustering activities and about research areas ripe for further
   investigation.  Of course, conversations in the halls and over
   meals will still be an essential component of the meeting.
   
Venue

   EL2000 will be held in conjunction with the 4th Annual Linux
   Showcase & Conference on October 12-14, 2000 in Atlanta, GA
   (www.linuxshowcase.org). In addition to the Extreme Linux track
   there will be two other refereed tracks: Hack Linux and Use Linux.
   There will also be vendor exhibits, tutorials, birds of feather
   sessions, and work in progress sessions.  Attendees of the Extreme
   Linux workshop will be full attendees of the conference and able to
   attend any sessions they want.
   
Call for Papers

Critical dates:

   The date for submission of papers will be April 17, 2000. Authors will
   be informed of acceptance or rejection by June 16, 2000 and will be
   expected to complete editorial revisions by July 23, 2000 and prepare
   camera ready copy by Aug. 24, 2000.
   
Scope:

   Papers describing original work in all areas of large-scale Linux
   cluster computing are sought. While the attendees may be expected to
   be interested in clustering of all types, the Extreme Linux series is
   devoted to clusters using Linux which are intended to scale to 100s or
   1000s of processors. Comparisons with other systems are of interest
   but papers should directly address issues of Linux and scale.
   
   Topics include, but are not limited to:
   
     Applications experiences: real codes run on real clusters, issues in
       performance, programmability, scaling, etc.
   
     Architectures: ways to build and organize large clusters

     Benchmarking: micro and macro, specific uses of and advances in the
       construction thereof
   
     Heterogeneity: processors, boards, networks, generations, etc.
   
     File Systems: distributed, parallel, huge, etc.
   
     Languages and Programming models: advances in MPI, PVM, UPC,
       Co-array Fortran, distributed shared memory, etc.
   
     Network connectivity: experience with gigabit NICs, VIA, switches,
       etc.
   
     Resource allocation and scheduling: batch systems, task migration,
       description of required resources
   
     Scaling: numbers of nodes, users, types of applications, etc.
   
     System administration: quantification of costs, strategies for
       reduced cost and increased flexibility, etc.
   
   As at all USENIX conferences, papers that analyze problem areas, draw
   important conclusions from practical experience, and make freely
   available the techniques and tools developed in the course of the work
   are especially welcome. Provisions to archive codes used in
   presentations such as benchmarks, modules, kernel patches at the
   extreme linux site can be made at the request of the authors.
   
Guide to submission of extended abstracts for Extreme Linux Track at
ALS 2000:

   All submissions for the Extreme Linux track of ALS 2000 will be
   electronic, in PostScript or PDF. A web form will be available here in
   February 2000.
   
   Authors will be notified of receipt of submission via e-mail. If
   you do not receive notification, contact: extremelinuxchairs@usenix.org.
   
   Extended abstracts, up to 10 pages in length, are preferred, but full
   papers can also be submitted. Papers should be 8 to 12 single-spaced
   8.5 x 11 inch pages (about 4000-6000 words), not counting figures and
   references. Papers longer than 14 pages will not be reviewed.
   
   It is imperative that you follow the instructions for submitting a
   quality paper. A good paper will clearly demonstrate that the authors:
     * are attacking a significant problem,
     * are familiar with the literature,
     * have devised an original or clever solution,
     * if appropriate, have implemented the solution and characterized
       its performance using reasonable experimental techniques, and
     * have drawn appropriate conclusions from their work.
       
   In order to facilitate the submission of current work the Extreme
   Linux Track will use the "shepherded paper" model. The program
   committee will notify authors of the acceptance or rejection of their
   paper by June 16, 2000. A program committee member will help the
   authors to produce a second version of the paper which may include
   updated results by July 23, 2000. Final, camera ready, versions will
   need to be submitted by August 24, 2000 in order to be including in
   the printed proceedings.
   
   Note: the ALS Extreme Linux Track, like most conferences and journals,
   requires that papers not be submitted simultaneously to more than one
   conference or publication, and that submitted papers not be previously
   or subsequently published elsewhere. Papers submitted to this
   conference that are under review elsewhere will not be reviewed.
   Papers accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms can not be
   accepted, and will not be reviewed. All submissions are held in the
   highest confidentiality prior to publication in the Proceedings, both
   as a matter of policy and in accord with the U.S. Copyright Act of
   1976.
   
   If you would like to use a predefined template when formatting your
   submission, please look at these samples: StarWriter 5.0,
   Troff, LaTeX and style file, Framemaker.
   
Conference Organizers:

Executive Committee:

     Pete Beckman, Los Alamos National Laboratory, co-chair
     David Greenberg, Center for Computing Sciences, co-chair
     Jon "Maddog" Hall, Linux International
     Bill Nitzberg, NASA
   
Program Committee in addition to the Executive Committee:
     David Bader, University of New Mexico
     Don Becker, Scyld Computing Corporation and USRA-CESDIS
     Peter J. Braam, Stelias Computing Inc & Carnegie Mellon University
     Remy Evard, Argonne National Laboratories
     David Halstead, Ames Laboratory
     Yutaka Ishikawa, RWCP
     Walter Ligon, Clemson University
     Greg Lindahl, HPTi
     Bill Saphir, LBL/NERSC