CPS 600 Winter-Spring 1995 A Prototype of new course CPS616 Computational Science for the Information Age: Module A: Course Overview Instructor: Geoffrey Fox Syracuse University 111 College Place Syracuse New York 13244-4100 Abstract of CPS 600 Course Foils This Introduction to course describes Philosophy which is built around both a general list of issues and technologies as well as particular focus on areas where NPAC is working We supplement these foils with those in InfoMall, InfoVision and Webserver collections We summarise Technology base in Simulation and Information Arena Discuss National Information Infrastructure Initiative List possible Topics in Course as set of 10 base modules Define Initial set of lectures and NPAC focus on Hierarchical Web Servers General Structure of CPS600 Assume that NII (National Information Infrastructure) will be built up as a hierarchical set of interlocked enterprise-wide or community networks each built around high performance webservers Study the technologies needed to build and exploit such an NII Aim at Computer Science not application side of "Computational Science" i.e. at developer of NII services This is a subset of original 10 module curricula (see later) Knowledge needed for CPS600 Understanding of UNIX and familiarity with use of shell, editors and some languages -- especially C or C++. (C++ not needed) Must have access to UNIX workstation which can access World Wide Web We could offer on PC and Macintosh but will strain NPAC support of base technologies Will use and learn if necessary HTML, PERL, PERL5, VRML and SQL Will learn to use and develop Web tools such as knowbots(agents) Structure of Course Learn and Study Base Technologies HTML , PERL, Clients, Servers Study applications and advanced features including Collaboration and Telemedicine ATM and ISDN hardware, switching and data transport Video-on-demand Image and Video compression Parallel Graphics and Rendering Storage and searching of Distributed and Parallel Databases Virtual Reality Representation of Multimedia Knowledge Distributed Simulation -- Integration of Computation with WWW Graded 50% on homework and 50% on project which must be closely connected to course. Project will be chosen about 25% through course. Coverage of Initial 10 Lectures is Approximately: Overview and Vision of NII, HPCC and Applications; Introduction to hierarchical networks and webservers Introduction to HTML and the "Course World" i.e. CPS600 dedicated Server Initial Mosaic client and WWW technologies; URl, MIME, HTTP, CCI (Common Client Interface), Clickable Maps Technologies and Current status of Web searching; Harvest demonstrations WWW Servers; CGI (Common Gateway Interface) Use of PERL and PERL5 Examples of Server enhancements built using PERL and PERL5 Agents and Knowbots Survey of possible Projects Initial 5 Homeworks are expected to be Initial Programming in HTML; each student builds home page Rove around Internet asnd capture resources of interest to class Initial Programming in PERL with simple scripts Development of Simple Server examples Study technologies and network. Propose and get approval for project National Challenges will drive the adoption of HPCC in the "Real World" These can be defined simply as those HPCC applications which have sufficient market to sustain a true balanced HPCC computing Industry with viable hardware and software companies With this definition, some "Grand Challenges" such as Oil Exploration are National challenges Alternatively one can define National Challenges by the HPCC technologies exploited High speed geographically distributed (ATM) networks i.e. The National Information Infrastructure (NII) with several hundred million clients and perhaps some 10,000 MPP based high performance multi-media servers Large scale text, Image and Video databases fed by Satellites, Information produced by National Enterprise such as credit card slips etc. The National Challenges Identified by the Federal HPCC Initiative Crisis and Emergency Management Civilian words for scaled down Military Command and Control Design and Manufacturing Education and Lifelong Learning Electronic Commerce Energy Management Environmental Monitoring Health Care Program in Information Age Computational Science Implemented Within Current Academic Program Federal 1994 Blue Book Comparison of National and Grand Challenges Core Enabling HPCC Software Technologies for Information Production (Simulation) PVM, Express, Linda, MPI ISIS (Cornell)High Performance Fortran (HPF) Compiler High Performance C, C++ Compile HPF Extensions - PARTI Parallel / Distributed Computing Runtime Tools ADIFOR (Differentiate Fortran Code) AVS and Extensions High Performance Fortran Interpreter Image Processing Parallel Debugger Parallel Performance Visualization Parallel Operating Systems I/O Scheduling Virtual Reality Event Driven Simulator Core Enabling HPCC Algorithms and Components for Information Production (Simulation) Mesh Generation SCALAPACK Sparse Matrix Solvers - Templates and libraries (Direct and Iterative) Particle Dynamics Kernels - Templates and Libraries ( O(N2) to fast multipole) Optimization Methodology and Templates Linear programming Non-linear programming Scheduling (neural-net, parallel) Templates Core Enabling HPCC Technologies Information Analysis, Access, Integration Parallel (Relational) Database e.g. Oracle 7.X or DB2 Parallel Edition Evolution/Revolution to Object databases? High Speed Network Infrastructure Multilevel Mass Storage Integration Software ("glue") Integration of Parallel and Distributed Computing Multimedia Support Video Browsing Image Content Full Text Search Real time I/O (disk ---> network) ATM Network Protocols and Management Compression Parallel Rendering Linkage Analysis (between records of database) Sorting (large databases) Core Enabling HPCC Technologies Information Analysis, Access, Integration (continued) Collaboration Services Multi user video conferencing Electronic whiteboards, etc. Authentication, Security and Privacy Usage and Charging Algorithms Televirtuality The world as a metacomputer -- Resource naming(URL), MIME World Wide Web and Mosaic Servers (CGI, Scripting Languages) Mosaic Interface Virtual Reality(VRML and DSI -- Distributed Simulation Internet) Information Organization Hyperlinks versus tables(relational) Information Agents and "worms" Image Processing Terrain Rendering Kodak Photo-CD Identification of features (Military targets, pathologies) Geographical Information Systems Spatial databases CPS616: Technologies and Applications of the Information Age Computational science can be defined broadly as the discipline on the interface between computer science and applications of computers. The current Syracuse course CPS615 and others nationwide, can be considered as "Computational Science for Scientific Computing" or "Technologies and applications for Scientific Computing". The audience is both the technologists (Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics) as well as the application fields such as Computational Chemistry, Physics and Aerospace Engineering. We propose a new course CPS616 playing a similar role to CPS615 but aimed at the Information related applications rather than scientific computing. At Syracuse University, application students could come from IST (Information studies which also covers technologies), Newhouse (Communications), Maxwell (Public Administration), VPA (Visual and Performing Arts), Education. Technology students are from Computer Science, Computer Engineering and IST. Implementation of Pilot version of CPS616 as CPS600(Special Topics) We propose to offer the full course in the first semester (January to April) of 1995 with a trial run of reduced scope as part of CPS713 (Applications of Computational Science) this fall. We will make all teaching material available electronically and have discussed producing a textbook (electronic and conventional). Many authors and teachers will be needed to cover field. Not all of these teachers will be at Syracuse University and videoconferencing may be used for part of the course. The course is currently structured as about ten independent modules of about three to six hours per module. We are now seeking comments and offers of help and collaboration. Overview of Draft Curriculum for Pilot CPS616 The conference proceedings "R and D for the NII: Technical Challenges" obtainable from EDUCOM (nii-forum@educom.com) is one useful general resource. It would be important to collect other useful general and specialized reference books for either teachers and/or students. There are currently 10 modules listed below. 1) The Internet and Specialized Testbeds as Prototypes of the GII (Global Information Infrastructure) 2) Physical Network 3) The Consumer Multimedia Enterprise: Multimedia Videogames, PC's, Settop boxes, and Workstations 4) Digital Media: Audio, Video, Graphics and Images 5) User, Application and Service Interfaces 6) Client and Server High Performance Multimedia Computer Requirements and Architecture 7) Base Software and Systems Architecture of the GII 8) Pervasive and Niche Applications for the GII 9) Generic Services and Middleware on the GII 10) The Emerging GII Enterprise in Industry, Academia and Society 1: Curriculum of Module: Internet and Specialized Testbeds as Prototypes of the GII (Global Information Infrastructure) 1) What is Internet including History, Phenomenology and base Technologies 2) Learn to use Gopher, Mosaic etc. 3) Peruse examples of text, image, video, Information systems 4) How to prepare and convert HTML, JPEG, MPEG 5) Gigabit Testbeds 2: Curriculum of Module: The Physical Network 1) Local Home Delivery -- The GII Offramps -- Copper pair, coax, fiber, wireless, Cellular, ADSL 2) Trunk Transmission -- fiber, Satellite 3) Switching -- ATM, ISDN 4) Architectures: Cable and Telephone Company, Distributed, Centralized, Hierarchical, Multivendor, Military (Global Grid) 3: Curriculum of Module: The Consumer Multimedia Enterprise: Multimedia Videogames, PC's, Settop boxes, and Workstations 1) CD-ROM 2) Settop Box 3) CD-I, 3DO, Nintendo, Sega, Atari(Jaguar) 4) Specialized Hardware: DVI, Video Accelerator cards 5) SGI and other high end systems 6) Multimedia Authoring 7) Edutainment 8) Anatomy of selected videogames and Multimedia titles: SIMCITY, MYST, NBA Jam, Crash and Burn, Mortal Kombat, Encarta 4: Curriculum of Module: Digital Media: Audio, Video, Graphics and Images 1) Rendering and Modeling 2) Photo-CD 3) Compression of Images, Video, Audio and Text -- MPEG, JPEG, Wavelet, Fractal 4) Individual and "crowd" display technology 5) Computer Animation for movies such as Jurassic Park 6) Video browsing 7) Video indexing -- speech recognition 8) Displays: HDTV 5: Curriculum of Module: User, Application and Service Interfaces 1) Virtual Reality 2) X, Motif 3) Mosaic and its future 4) ATM Layers (AAL) 5) Interfaces for real world users such as children 6: Curriculum for Module: Client and Server High Performance Multimedia Computer Requirements and Architecture 1) Multimedia Clients (see module 3) 2) Parallel Video and other Information servers 3) Parallel I/O Issues 4) Disk and Archival Storage Issues 5) Specialized versus General Purpose Architectures (Workstation, Mainframe, Teradata, nCUBE, IBM SP-2 and equivalent) 7: Curriculum for Module: Base Software and Systems Architecture of the GII 1) World Wide Web -- URL and futures 2) Network Protocols, Management and Switching -- data transport 3) What is right/wrong with TCP/IP, PVM, MPI, ISIS etc. 4) Fault Tolerance 5) Distributed Operating Systems 6) Televirtuality 7) Network Resource Allocation 8) Caching 8: Curriculum for Module: Pervasive and Niche Applications for the GII 1) Movies on Demand 2) Interactive TV 3) Digital Library 4) Telemedicine 5) Education 6) Global Grid(Defense) 7) Commerce 8) Manufacturing 9) Distributed Scientific Computing 9: Curriculum for Module: Generic Services and Middleware on the GII 1) Parallel and Distributed Databases 2) Security, Privacy -- cipher/decipher 3) Collaboration -- distributed whiteboards etc. 4) Digital cash 5) Decision Support and Datamining Tools 6) Geographic Information Systems -- Terrain data 7) Organization of Material in Multimedia Systems on the World Wide Web with URL's -- the nonlinear Information Model 10: Curriculum for Module: The Emerging GII Enterprise in Industry, Academia and Society 1) Early (successful) commercial services 2) Convergence of industries 3) Convergence of Academic Fields 4) Convergence of Computing and Communication 5) What (if anything) will happen to society from the GII -- Quality of Life, Jobs, Education --are there important negative implications? 6) Intellectual property rights on the GII 7) What information is available now (free or more money) and what could be made available 8) Current Internet Assets 9) Kodak Picture Exchange Handouts Lectures 2 and 3: Tutorials on HTML Paul Coddington's online guide to making a home page Paul Coddington's online condensed guide to HTML Examples of HTML original using constructs in condensed guide with display from Mosaic and Netscape NCSA's long online guide to HTML 7 Exemplars of HTML and resultant Mosaic display Discussion in terms of foils and Mosaic Pages of HTML editors Handouts Lectures 2 and 3: Special Webtools for CPS 600 Overview List of Current Tools Virtual Disk Navigator Hyperworld Navigator Online HTML Editor mh based Email Folder Viewer Message Handler Message Editor Message Bag