🚀 go-pugleaf

Fellow CSE people,

     The Parallel Computation Lab is pleased to announce the second meeting
of RAPPS (Radically Acronymic Parallel Processing Seminar).  RAPPS will
be meeting from 11:30 - 1:00 on Tuesday, October 6, in APM 5414 (the Parallel
Computation Lab).

The Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Attend the RAPPS Seminar
-----------------------------------------------------------

(10)  Meet exotic people from far-away places.
 (9)  We do more before 1:00pm than most people do all day.
 (8)  Darn it -- It's time you did something for you!
 (7)  RAPPS is the seminar with the coolest acronym.
 (6)  If enough people attend, you will be spared from any more silly Top 10 lists.
 (5)  Pizza will be served.
 (4)  Next year's comps will be exclusively based on RAPPS seminars.
 (3)  Because I spent my valuable time making a Top 10 list instead of playing
      xpilot, reading network news, or doing (gasp) research.
 (2)  Free "Yo!  PCL RAPPS" T-shirts and door prizes.

And the number one reason you should attend this Tuesday's RAPPS seminar:

 (1)  Mohan Ahuja will be talking about the Basic Unit of Computation in
      Distributed Systems:

What is a Basic Unit of Computation in Distributed Systems?
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Mohan Ahuja

To answer this question we define a ground state in a distributed system as
a global state in which there are no messages in transit.  A basic unit of
computation is an indivisible and independent unit of computation that
takes a system from one ground state to another.  We will discuss definition
and properties of such a unit, how to identify one, and an algorithm to enforce
one on demand.  This research helps in understanding the nature of the
communication pattern in a computation and how the communication pattern
is related to the concurrency in the system.  The basic unit of computation
can be used in checkpointing, distributed debugging and  asserting about
attainment of stable properties.