Performance Models for Data Transfers: A Case Study with Molecular Chemistry Kernels

With increasing complexity of hardwares, systems with different memory nodes are ubiquitous in High Performance Computing (HPC). It is paramount to develop strategies to overlap the data transfers between memory nodes with computations in order to exploit the full potential of these systems. In this article, we consider the problem of deciding the order of data transfers between two memory nodes for a set of independent tasks with the objective to minimize the makespan. We prove that with limited memory capacity, obtaining the optimal order of data transfers is a NP-complete problem. We propose several heuristics for this problem and provide details about their favorable situations. We present an analysis of our heuristics on traces, obtained by running 2 molecular chemistry kernels, namely, Hartree-Fock (HF) and Coupled Cluster Single Double (CCSD) on 10 nodes of an HPC system. Our results show that some of our heuristics achieve significant overlap for moderate memory capacities and are very close to the lower bound of makespan

In the beginning was the big toe: Bataille, base materialism, bipedalism

This article goes back to Georges Bataille's ruminations on the big toe, published in Documents in 1929, in order to make a materialist case for the claim that this digit is, above all for evolutionary reasons, definitive of human beings humanity. It explores the contradiction whereby the big toe, in spite of its anatomical importance in distinguishing human beings from their ancestors and their genetic cousins, that is, from other hominids and other primates, has been systematically demeaned or denigrated in representations of the body. Following an introduction, the argument unfolds in two main sections. The first of these is anthropological or palaeo-anatomical in focus, and reconstructs the determining role of the big toe in the evolution of human beings as bipedal as opposed to quadrupedal creatures. The second shifts attention to the iconography of the big toe, and uses the Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda to propose a reorganisation of the history of representations of the human body in terms of this digit; it looks at several Renaissance paintings in this light. Finally, in a polemical concluding section, this article returns to Bataille's reflections on the big toe and argues again for its central importance for a materialist philosophy

Polyform Film: Peter Watkins and the Paris Commune

In the roughly 125-year history of cinema, no more than five narrative films seem to have been made about the Paris Commune. In their very different ways, all of them represent an attempt to avoid what Grigory Kozintsev, the co-director of one of them, referred to as “the detestable historical film” (Starr 2006, 176).1 Kozintsev was referring to the “historical pictures” produced by the “Leningrad cinema factory,” which “shot the costumes,” as he put it in a delightful formulation, “with the actors inside them” (quoted in Leyda 1973, 202). But the phrase “detestable historical film” might also be adapted to describe the prim, corseted style of what is today called “period drama” or “costume drama.” Here, I characterize this generally conservative, nostalgic genre, which has been synonymous in Britain over several decades with BBC adaptations of canonical nineteenth-century novels, as Uniform film—both because of its commitment to superficially scrupulous depictions of the past, which might be called merely costume-deep; and because of the stylistic uniformity of its mise-en-scène. Kozintzev, in contrast to this static, superficially respectful approach to the events of the past, hoped “primarily to replace this parade of historical costumes across the surface of the film by a feeling of the epoch, in other words purposively to replace it with a general style, and not the naturalism of details” (Leyda 1973). As the first proletarian revolution in history, seminal in its importance both to contemporary and later radical movements, the Paris Commune seems to have demanded a cinema that replaces the parade of historical costumes and that refuses the naturalism of details

Socially empty space and dystopian utopianism in the late Nineteenth Century

In ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’, Walter Benjamin refers at one point to ‘socially empty space’, an idea that he claims to have found in Marx. I have been unable to locate this concept in Marx’s writings, but this might not matter, for the formulation in any case seems more Benjaminian than Marxian. Benjamin himself, however, uses it rather enigmatically. He invokes it in relation to some lines from Baudelaire about an old woman who, because she is excluded from ‘the large, closed parks’ of Paris, sits alone and pensive on a bench in a public garden, ‘at that hour when the setting sun / Bloodies the sky with bright red wounds’ (pp. 101–2). Even in this context, where it appears to refer to those zones of the metropolis that are deliberately designed to exclude the people that inhabit it, the idea of ‘socially empty space’ remains abstract and undeveloped. So in this chapter I want to exploit precisely the emptiness of the phrase, its elusive suggestiveness, in order to think about the utopian and dystopian aspects of depopulated space for capitalist modernity; that is, for a society archetypally defined by the sheer populousness of its metropolitan cities, which Raymond Williams once characterized in terms of ‘an unprecedented — crowding and rushing — human and social organization’ (p. 29).1 Socially empty space is a species of space in which, because one expects it to be filled, densely populated, like the emblematic spaces of metropolitan modernity, the absence of people is perceived almost as a presence

Standing upright, unsleeping: sleeplessness, wakefulness and watchfulness in Prometheus Bound

This article reinterprets Prometheus as an archetype of wakefulness and watchfulness. In the Aeschylean version, this mythical hero, is a victim of what might be characterised as sleep deprivation. The article begins by situating Prometheus in mythographic terms, arguing that scholars have overlooked the importance of sleeplessness to Zeus's punishment of him. It proceeds to trace the changes between Hesiod's and the Aeschylean account, paying attention to matters of crime and punishment. The article then offers a detailed rereading of Prometheus Bound, focusing first on Hermes's threats at the end of the play, an important context for thinking about penal torture; and, second, on the torture to which he is subjected at the start of the play. After outlining the role of sleep deprivation in medieval and early modern torture practices, the article returns to the classical period and the part that remaining awake plays in an episode in the Odyssey. Finally, it argues that Prometheus's sleeplessness, though the result of torture, acquires a positive, even heroic value in the Aeschylean play because it is associated with a state of political vigilance that resists the panoptic surveillance of tyrants. Here, wakefulness is redeemed as watchfulness

Rochester City School District Charter Schools: Decreasing the Achievement Gap?

The demographics and socioeconomic status of the students attending the Rochester City School District (RCSD) are significantly different than the average student in New York State. The average student in the RCSD is African American and considered economically disadvantaged. These two characteristics and Rochester being an urban location are the perfect combination for a charter school. Most educators create charter schools in urban districts to target students from low-socioeconomic families. This paper focuses on the requirements and logistics that differ a charter school from a traditional charter school to determine whether or not charter schools are decreasing the achievement gap

Butyn Versus Cocaine.

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