Last minute deals

So I am in NJ running around to get a good deal on stuff...I picked up a couple of CF cards for me and Harsh, a 500GB HDD for Harsh, etc. Managed to finally get a good deal on a SUV rental to DTW for New Year...!!! Haven't been able to adjust to work mode yet. I am trying hard or rather hardly.. excited abt the D-Day...!!!!
Picked up some puja samagri from Oaktree rd and then had some spicy chaat to boot...
well all the clocks are ticking now...12 more days to go

Snowing in NJ

Well it's snowed a bit today in Somerset, NJ. Pretty nice to watch the small blobs of cotton candy falling from the sky and since the temperature was not that low, they just melted after falling on the ground.
Got to eat authentic "ghar ka khaana" thanks to "MIL". Lunch comprised of white vatana curry, rotis. Dinner was something entirely new to me-"Chakolya" curry made with cooked rotis..or something like that. I liked it-something new and interesting. Sauntered down to the Desi store in S.Plainsfield and picked up quite some stuff for both NJ and BB.

SC07-part II, III and so on

SC07 is in full swing...Hot keywords: Multi-core, Cell, FPGA in no particular order. On Monday (11/12), I attended the FPGA tutorial: pretty elementary stuff. But I had a chance to see what the industry and the HPC community was interested in general. I think the most entertaining piece was getting to know the current and future trends in computing. This gives a new perspective to my research and I am able to evaluate my research in comparison to where the industry is heading. Monday evening: The exhibit floors open finally..lots of companies are throwing away prizes, notably Intel throwing 45prizes in 45 minutes to celebrate their 45nm release. I tried a lot but the "unlucky" me did not win any of the prizes. I almost forgot to have dinner as I was so busy checking out the prize quotients of the booths. I rated the booths giving out Apple products a PQ of 5 and above. Anyways a fun-filled evening with two free extra large drinks on the house..!!!
Tuesday(11/13): I managed to meet with someone from AMD, Inc.(FPGA, MD), GiDEL, a senior researcher from IBM, etc. I attended a couple of sessions as part of my student volunteer duties. I had an opportunity to talk to Brian from FPGA.com on "Precision analysis requirements for FPGA applications". He was stressing on the need for a standard to adhere to while developing applications and implementing them on FPGAs. There's no need for sticking to double precision when you can get away with single precision. In the evening, it was time to attend vintage car show as part of the SGI 25th anniversary celebrations (check the pic). I admire SGI for pulling its socks after filing for bankruptcy two years back. It has become a formidable company after concentrating on its core competencies such as the shared memory model machines (and yes..FPGA based computing). The SGI event included free dinner and drinks as part of the party. great event in general...!!!
Wednesday(11/14): I attended a PVFS(Parallel Virtual File Systems) session and then a BE(Broader Engagement) panel about "How to keep a job in the Computing industry?". Both the sessions were eye-opening and interesting. That evening all of us headed out to a Thai place for dinner.
Thursday(11/15): Apparently the last day of the conference saw a lot of activity. I had to attend a session as a student volunteer plus attended a meeting with SGI ppl at 1 pm. In the end, Rajesh, Hari, Ganesh and myself roamed arnd taking pics with the NEC supercomputer node (>1.6TFlops), Cray nodes, etc. We started packing up our VT booth by 4pm. We finished that by 7pm and then headed out to an Indian place for dinner.
Friday(11/16): The place is deserted, the net's down and a spectacular week has come to an end at Reno.

SC07 Reno--Here I am

I am in Reno attending the SC07 conference. I took a flight from IAD to LAX and then a connecting flight from LAX to Reno. I attended my session on Sunday feeling all bogged down and jetlagged. The workshop on High Performance ReConfigurable Technology was very interesting and I learnt a lot about compilers, high performance applications using FPGAs. In the end, there was an interesting panel that met to discuss the future trends and this was the most interesting part of the workshop. In short, the future trend is towards identifying or hiring a "computer-architecture aware" software engineer to develop common applications on FPGAs. Using FPGAs for mainstream applications can also reduce the cost of FPGAs as compared to CPUs.
In the evening, all of us attended the Bowling party held at the National Bowling Stadium. I have still not adapted myself to the time zone change. I wish I had an FPGA embedded in my brain that could adapt to the time zones, etc. resulting in better productivity.
BTW my convention center is in a very scenic place surrounded by snow-capped mountains. very nice frame for a pic. I shall post one on my blog as soon as time permits.